Radiotherapy for esophageal cancer usually needs to be done 20~30 times, and the specific number of times cannot be generalized.
Esophageal cancer is a kind of malignant tumor occurring in the epithelial cells of esophagus, and at present, the main clinical treatments are surgery, radiotherapy, chemotherapy and targeted therapy.
How many times radiotherapy for esophageal cancer needs to be done cannot be generalized, it needs to be judged according to the actual condition of patients, and generally it needs to be done 20~30 times. First of all, patients with preoperative adjuvant radiotherapy generally need to do 20 times of radiotherapy to increase the rate of surgical resection, and the postoperative 5-year survival rate of patients with preoperative adjuvant radiotherapy can be increased from about 33% to about 47%.
Secondly, for patients with serious conditions, lymph node metastasis and distal metastasis of cancer cells, palliative radiotherapy is usually adopted to alleviate patients’ discomfort and prolong their survival time, which usually requires about 20 sessions.
Meanwhile, for patients who cannot accept surgical treatment, or the effect of surgical treatment is not good, but the condition is not serious, radical radiotherapy can be adopted, which generally needs to be done 25~30 times.
To sum up, the number of radiotherapy for esophageal cancer needs to be judged according to the actual situation of patients, and it is enough for patients to actively cooperate with doctors for treatment.