This year, over 12 000 new cases of esophageal cancer will be diagnosed in the United States. Despite curative resection, nearly 90% of patients will die of the disease. This has provided investigators the impetus to examine whether induction chemoradiotherapy (CRT) followed by surgery is beneficial in patients with resectable esophageal cancer. Currently, only 4 prospective randomized trials have been published.1-4 The 3-year survival reported was 17% to 32% in patients receiving CRT and surgery vs 6.0% to 13.8% in patients receiving surgery alone1-4 Only 1 of the 4 trials, however, demonstrated a significant benefit in overall survival with CRT and surgery.4