LAUSR

We deeply appreciate the great contributions of many physicians in the registry of esophageal cancer cases. The Comprehensive Registry of Esophageal Cancer in Japan, 2012, was published here, despite some delay. The registry complies with the Act for the Protection of Personal Information. The encryption with a HASH function is used for anonymity in an unlinkable fashion. We briefly summarized the Comprehensive Registry of Esophageal Cancer in Japan, 2012. Japanese Classification of Esophageal Cancer 10th [1] and UICC TNM Classification 7th [2] were used for cancer staging according to the subjected year. A total of 8003 cases were registered from 316 institutions in Japan. Tumor locations were cervical: 4.6%, upper thoracic: 12.8%, middle thoracic: 47.9%, lower thoracic: 26.1% and EG junction: 7.6%. Superficial carcinomas (Tis, T1a, T1b) were 38.2%. As for the histologic type of biopsy specimens, squamous cell carcinoma and adenocarcinoma accounted for 89.5% and 6.0%, respectively. Regarding clinical results, the 5-year survival rates of patients treated using endoscopic resection, concurrent chemoradiotherapy, radiotherapy alone, or esophagectomy were 84.4, 32.4, 24.9, and 55.6%, respectively. The endoscopic submucosal dissection accounted for 84.9% of endoscopic resection. Esophagectomy was performed in 4722 cases. Concerning the approach used for esophagectomy, 36.0% of the cases were treated thoracoscopically. The operative mortality (within 30 days after surgery) was 0.52% and the hospital mortality was 2.35%. The 5-year survival rate of patients with pStage IV in UICC classification (including patients with supraclavicular node metastasis) was better than that of patients with pStage IVb in JES classification (not including patients with supraclavicular node metastasis). We hope that this Comprehensive Registry of Esophageal Cancer in Japan for 2012 will help to improve all aspects of the diagnosis and treatment of esophageal cancer in Japan. These data were first made available on March 2019, as the Comprehensive Registry of Esophageal Cancer in Japan, 2012.