There is no clinical argument about whether surgery or conservative treatment is better for esophageal cancer, patients need to choose conservative treatment and surgery reasonably according to their conditions. Esophageal cancer patients need to adopt individualized treatment, and most of them will reasonably choose surgical treatment, radiotherapy, chemotherapy, targeted therapy, etc. according to their physical condition and tumor stage, so as to eradicate the tumor to the greatest extent and improve the cure rate. Therefore, there is no argument that whether esophageal cancer is better treated by surgery or conservative treatment. Generally very early stage patients can achieve better curative effect after endoscopic treatment, while early stage patients can achieve radical cure after surgical treatment. If the patient’s disease progresses to the middle or late stage, a combination of radiotherapy, immunotherapy, targeted therapy and surgery is also required. If the patient cannot tolerate surgery or cannot undergo surgery, radical radiotherapy can be adopted under the guidance of the doctor to improve the patient’s survival. In addition, in case of recurrent or metastatic esophageal cancer, chemotherapy or targeted therapy is mostly used to prolong the survival time of patients. It is suggested that esophageal cancer patients should strictly follow the doctor’s instructions and choose reasonable treatments according to their own specific conditions, so as to avoid delaying their condition.