Survival of patients with distal esophageal and gastric cardia tumors: A population-based analysis of gastroesophageal junction carcinomas

To link to full-text access for this article, visit this link: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jtcvs.2009.04.011 Byline: Bryan A. Whitson (a), Shawn S. Groth (a), Zhongze Li (b), Robert A. Kratzke (a)(c), Michael A. Maddaus (a) Abbreviations: AJCC, American Joint Committee on Cancer; DE, distal esophageal; GC, gastric cardia; GEJ, gastroesophageal junction; SEER, Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results Abstract: Distal esophageal tumors and gastric cardia tumors, although only physically separated by centimeters, have different staging systems and are usually treated differently. We hypothesized that gastroesophageal junction adenocarcinomas (eg, gastric cardia and distal esophageal tumors) were not distinct entities and had similar survival. Author Affiliation: (a) Department of Surgery, Division of Thoracic and Foregut Surgery, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, Minn (b) Biostatistics Core, University of Minnesota Cancer Center, Minneapolis, Minn (c) Department of Medicine, Division of Hematology, Oncology, and Transplantation, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, Minn Article History: Received 3 July 2008; Revised 26 March 2009; Accepted 12 April 2009