Table 2.

An overview of the statements on which consensus was reached

Definitions		Consensus (%)
Neoadjuvant chemoradiotherapy plus surgery
Main goal of nCRT	To downstage the tumor and to facilitate R0 resection, with the potential added benefit of treating micrometastases at an early stage	89
Chemotherapy regimen	A combination of platinum along with taxane, platinum in combination with a 5-fluorouracil derivate, or platinum combined with vinorelbine	91
Total dose of radiotherapy	41.4 Gy	96
Surgery after nCRT	Planned esophagectomy	76
Neoadjuvant chemoradiotherapy followed by a strategy of observation
Strategy of observation after nCRT	Active surveillance	87
Main goal of active surveillance	To omit surgery and only perform surgery when loco(regional) tumor is detected without distant metastases	91
Evaluation of response to therapy	Response evaluation	97
First moment to start response evaluations	6–8 weeks after completion of nCRT	77
Diagnostic tests required during response evaluations	Yes	100
Diagnostic tests that should be performed during response evaluations	Diagnostic CT scan	76
	18F-FDG PET/CT scan	89
	Upper endoscopy with (bite-on-bite) biopsies	96
	Endoscopic ultrasonography with fine-needle aspiration of suspicious lymph nodes	91
	PET/CT combined with diagnostic CT scan	75
Surgery during active surveillance	Esophagectomy after surveillance	90
No tumor detected during active surveillance	Clinically complete response	82
If a tumor not (completely) responds to nCRT	Residual disease/cancer/tumor	78
Local disease	Tumor only located in the esophagus	96
Regional disease	Only tumor-positive lymph node(s) around the esophagus	98
Locoregional disease	Tumor in both the esophagus and surrounding lymph node(s)	98
Distant metastases	Organ metastases or non-regional lymph node metastases that occur after nCRT and during active surveillance, but outside the time window to surgery	97
Interval metastases	Organ metastases or non-regional lymph node metastases that occur after nCRT and during active surveillance, but within normal time window to surgery (without any delay)	95
Definitive chemoradiotherapy (possibly followed by resection)
Main goal of dCRT	To cure esophageal cancer without surgery	96
Indications for treatment with dCRT	T4b carcinoma, proximal tumor, patients unfit for surgery and patients who refuse surgery	95
Chemotherapy regimen	A combination of a platinum along with a taxane, a platinum in combination with a 5-fluorouracil derivate, or a platinum combined with vinorelbine	82
Total dose of radiotherapy	50.4 Gy	91
Surgery after dCRT	Salvage esophagectomy	96

nCRT neoadjuvant chemoradiotherapy, dCRT definitive chemoradiotherapy, Gy Gray, ¹⁸F-FDG PET/CT 18F-fluorodeoxyglucose positron emission tomography/computed tomography