Esophageal cancer is a curable disease, and like other cancers, there are many treatment methods, among which radiation therapy is one of the main treatment methods for esophageal cancer. In order to get the ideal treatment effect, the main thing is early detection, early diagnosis and early treatment of esophageal cancer. Radiation therapy (radiotherapy for short) is the treatment of tumor through ionizing radiation. Its purpose is to give precise radiation dose to the determined volume of tumor, while reducing the degree of damage to the normal tissues around the tumor, so as to achieve high quality survival of the patient with minimal cost while curing the tumor, and for some patients, radiotherapy is used as an important means of highly palliative treatment, such as symptom relief and pain relief. Radiation therapy for esophageal cancer includes two categories: radical and palliative. The choice of treatment plan needs to be based on the lesion site, extent, degree of esophageal obstruction and the patient’s general condition. Surgery for cervical and upper thoracic esophageal cancer is highly traumatic and has high complication rate, while radiotherapy is less invasive and has better efficacy than surgery, so radiotherapy should be preferred. Radical radiotherapy can be used for patients who are still in good general condition, can eat semi-liquid or liquid diet, have no metastasis of supraclavicular lymph nodes and distant metastasis, no tracheal invasion, no signs of esophageal perforation and bleeding, lesion length <7~8cm and no contraindication of internal medicine. Other patients can be treated with palliative radiotherapy aimed at relieving esophageal obstruction, improving feeding difficulties, relieving pain, improving patient quality of life and prolonging patient survival. The selection of radiotherapy source can be based on the following principles: 4-8 MV X-rays for cervical and upper thoracic esophageal cancer; 15 MV or more X-rays for mid-thoracic and lower thoracic esophageal cancer. Radical radiotherapy is irradiated 5 times a week with 1.8-2.0Gy each time, and the total dose is 60-70Gy/7-8 weeks. Palliative radiotherapy also tries to give radical amount or near radical amount. Pre-operative radiotherapy is mainly applied to those who have already invaded esophageal cancer, and it is clinically estimated that there is difficulty in surgical resection alone, but the tumor can be expected to be resected by partial regression after radiotherapy. The dose of preoperative radiotherapy is 30~70Gy/4~8 weeks, and surgical resection will be performed 4~6 weeks after radiotherapy. Chemotherapy is administered every 4 weeks during radiotherapy and after radiotherapy, every 3 weeks. Recent studies have shown that: compared with conventional radiotherapy, simultaneous radical radiotherapy can reduce the 1 to 2 year absolute mortality rate of esophageal cancer by 7% and the local residual/recurrence rate by 12% . For those who have residual tumor after palliative resection, postoperative pathological examination reveals cancer infiltration at the cut end of esophagus, the surgical margins are too narrow, and the tumor is basically resected but the clinical estimation may have subclinical lesions remaining, postoperative radiotherapy should be performed to improve the 5-year survival rate. Recently, some scholars have suggested the use of extracorporeal three-field irradiation method, super-segmented segmental radiotherapy, and 60Co, 137Cs, 192Yb intracavitary radiotherapy for esophageal cancer to reduce the radiation dose to lung tissues and spinal cord to reduce radiation damage and improve the efficacy of radiotherapy. The irradiation methods include external and intraluminal radiation, preoperative radiation and postoperative radiation. Radiation therapy can cause the following complications: 1) Radiation esophagitis, which will heal completely within 2 months, but 50% of patients will have esophageal stricture; 2) Radiation pneumonia may occur; 3) Radiation osteitis may occur in 10% of long-term survivors; 4) Radiation myelitis is seen six months to several years after over-irradiation of spinal cord area, and paraplegia may occur in severe cases. Besides actively cooperating with treatment, patients with esophageal cancer radiotherapy should also pay attention to good eating habits, not to overeat, eat less and more meals, quit smoking and drinking, and avoid eating spicy, spicy, hard, hot, fried and acidic irritating foods to prevent bleeding and obstruction at the lesion site. You should eat high-calorie, high-protein, high-vitamin and easy-to-digest food, and eat less sweets. You should drink an appropriate amount of water after each meal to flush the food attached to the lesion site and increase the sensitivity of radiotherapy. It is worth emphasizing that the toxic side effects after radiotherapy can be treated with Chinese herbal medicine, and the effect has been clinically confirmed.