Retrospective analysis of immunotherapy for esophageal cancer in combination with radiotherapy and radiochemotherapy

Abstract

The optimum duration of postoperative anticancer therapy remains unclear at present. To evaluate the effectiveness of immunotherapy using protein-bound polysaccharide K (PSK) for esophageal carcinoma, a cooperative randomized study involving 18 institutions in Japan was organized by Dr. H. Satou. Using the data from this prospective study, we retrospectively analyzed the outcome for patients surviving longer than 6 months or longer than 1 year, and found that patients receiving PSK for more than 6 months or more than 1 year had a significantly better survival than those receiving PSK for less these times.
These findings suggest that PSK therapy should be continued for at least 6 months to improve the prognosis.