Preoperative staging for esophageal cancer. After the diagnosis, patients have to undergo a detailed assessment to select the best treatment methods. Dr. Anton Titov, MD. What diagnostic studies help determine the best possible treatment for esophageal carcinoma? Well, first of all, the esophageal cancer diagnosis is made by gastroscopy, upper GI endoscopy. Then you will get a esophagus biopsy, and you can make the diagnosis itself. You do esophageal carcinoma staging in a modern hospital, which is treating esophageal cancer. There should be endoscopic ultrasound possibility and also CT scan, which is available everywhere, and also the PET CT scan. All these three diagnostic tests are combined. Then you can predict precisely stage the esophageal cancer Can you estimate prognostic factors based on the preoperative or pre-treatment assessment by PET CT, endoscopic ultrasound, regular CT or the combination of these diagnostic studies? Yeah, certainly, you can. The most important thing is whether the patient has got any distant metastases of the disease, like, for example, in the liver or bones or lungs. If there is no distant metastasis, in that case, the curative treatment is possible. Dr. Jari Rasanen, MD. And of course, the earlier the stage, the better is the prognosis for the patient. It means that you can determine that the cancer is limited to the mucosa of the esophagus. So, in that case, the prognosis of the patient is excellent. The deeper cancer grows into the wall of the esophagus, the worse the prognosis will be.