I'm not your oncologist, GI doctor, nor thoracic surgeon... or Tumor Board. But these folk should be individually (and collectively as a Tumor Board) be advising you as to next steps. And my guess is the consensus would overwhelmingly be to now have the esophagectomy. This because it offers a big statistical advantage towards never seeing your esophageal cancer again (buy not a 100% guarantee).

I've counseled hundreds of our fellow EC patients all over the world... so I've seen the paths they took.

Yes... two ways to go... stay closely monitored... and wait to see if it "returns"... or... have the surgery.

I put "returns" in quotes because it's somewhat meaningless that your solid original EC tumor is now showing no signs of existence. But are these cancer cells still around... whether in your esophagus, or in some lymph nodes, or in your bloodstream? Most likely.... but it's just tough to see right now. The whole reason we do chemotherapy... do radiation... maybe do immunotherapy... is to beat the crap out of our cancer... to prepare the breeding ground (esophagus) for removal. And NOW is the time to cut it out. And after they cut it out, they should still follow up with more chemo and/or immunotherapy... but this will be highly dependent on what is seen on your post-op pathology. I've seen stage 1's go straight to surgery (zero neoadjuvant treatments) and wake up as stage 4s due to many positive lymph nodes. How is this possible? Because again, scans cannot see tumors smaller than 5 to 8 mm. PET scans may or may not show some SUV uptake... but even these areas are hard to judge as cancer or not.

Just pm me if you'd like to discuss further. And just so you know... just because I did chemo, radiation, esophagectomy, and a year of immunotherapy... 4 years ago... doesn't mean I want YOU to do this as well. Each case is dependent on many factors... your age, your stage of EC, type of EC, location or tumor, nearby lymph invasion, other comorbidities, etc. Depth of penetration thru the layers of your esophagus is most important as to what comes next. But if you finished your last treatment 6 weeks ago... surgery should be coming in the next few weeks. Otherwise you will need to be re-scanned.

Gary