Review
Copyright ©The Author(s) 2015. Published by Baishideng Publishing Group Inc. All rights reserved.
World J Gastroenterol. May 21, 2015; 21(19): 5805-5812
Published online May 21, 2015. doi: 10.3748/wjg.v21.i19.5805
Incidence and treatment of brain metastasis in patients with esophageal carcinoma
Wei Feng, Peng Zhang, Xiao Zheng, Ming Chen, Wei-Min Mao
Wei Feng, Peng Zhang, Xiao Zheng, Ming Chen, Wei-Min Mao, Department of Radiation Oncology, Zhejiang Key Laboratory of Diagnosis and Treatment Technology on Thoracic Oncology (Lung and Esophagus), Zhejiang Key Laboratory of Radiation Oncology, Zhejiang Cancer Hospital, Hangzhou 310022, Zhejiang Province, China
Author contributions: Feng W, Zhang P and Zheng X contributed equally to this work; Feng W, Zhang P, Zheng X, Chen M, and Mao WM designed the study and wrote the paper; Feng W and Zhang P performed the research; and Zheng X and Chen M contributed new reagents/analytic tools.
Supported by Zhejiang Province Science and Technology Project of Traditional Chinese Medicine, No. 2011ZB017; and the Talent Project of Medical and Health Sciences Fund of Zhejiang Province, No. 2012RCB005.
Conflict-of-interest: The authors have no interests conflicting with this work.
Open-Access: This article is an open-access article which was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Correspondence to: Wei Feng, MD, Department of Radiation Oncology, Zhejiang Key Laboratory of Diagnosis and Treatment Technology on Thoracic Oncology (Lung and Esophagus), Zhejiang Key Laboratory of Radiation Oncology, Zhejiang Cancer Hospital, No. 38 Guangji Road, Hangzhou 310022, Zhejiang Province, China. fengweibrian@126.com
Telephone: +86-571-88122506 Fax: +86-571-88122506
Received: January 7, 2015
Peer-review started: January 8, 2015
First decision: January 22, 2015
Revised: February 28, 2015
Accepted: March 31, 2015
Article in press: March 31, 2015
Published online: May 21, 2015
Processing time: 132 Days and 22.4 Hours
Core Tip

Core tip: The incidence of brain metastasis from esophageal carcinoma (BMEC) is extremely low but has increased in recent years. The relevant reports on this unique disease have primarily focused on issues such as whether the auxiliary treatment of esophageal cancer promotes BMEC, the correlation of survival duration with different treatment methods, and imaging characteristics determined using various imaging approaches. We reviewed the different perspectives of BMEC and compared BMEC studies performed in different countries.