Investigation of clinical and dosimetric factors associated with postoperative pulmonary complications in esophageal cancer patients treated with concurrent chemoradiotherapy followed by surgery

Conclusions: Dosimetric factors but not clinical factors were found to be strongly associated with the incidence of postoperative pulmonary complications in this cohort of esophageal cancer patients treated with concurrent chemoradiation plus surgery. The volume of the lung spared from doses of ≥5 Gy was the only independent dosimetric factor in multivariate analysis. This suggests that ensuring an adequate volume of lung unexposed to radiation might reduce the incidence of postoperative pulmonary complications.