Can the results of Checkmate 577 be applied to patients who do not undergo surgery following chemoradiation because of a clinical complete response?

The standard approach for patients with locally advanced esophageal cancer would be to proceed with surgical resection after neoadjuvant chemoradiation, regardless of clinical response. And then, if surgical pathology confirms residual disease, to proceed with adjuvant nivolumab. If the clinical res...

Unfortunately, we do not have data at the present time to help answer this question. There are a number of ongoing phase III studies particularly in esophageal squamous cell carcinomas that we hope will read out in the near future to help answer this.

While this is an important clinical question, especially for frail and elderly patients, at this time we do not have evidence to answer this question. Further clinical trials are needed to answer this question.