Abstract： Objective To observe the acute side effects, local control rate and survival rate of concurrent chemoradiotherapy (CC) and radiotherapy alone (R) for patients with esophageal carcinoma.Methods From June 2006 to February 2009, 209 patients with esophageal carcinoma were observed, 105 of them were treated with CC.Of all the patients, 117 received three-dimensional conformal radiotherapy, 92 received intensity modulated radiotherapy, the median prescription dose was 60 Gy.The regimen of LFP (5-FU, cisplatin and calcium folinate) was selected for this study, side effects, local control rate and survival rate were observed and subsets analysis were performed.Results The overall follow-up rate was 99.0%,there were 99 and 44 patients whose follow-up time was more than 2 and 3 years, respectively;for the CC group, the data were 45 and 14, respectively;and for the R group, 54 and 30, respectively.The 1-,2-,3-year local control rates of CC group and R group were 88.1%,69.2%,66.2% and 81.0%,64.0%,54.9%(χ2=2.31,P=0.128), respectively.The 1-,2-,3-year overall survival rates of CC group and R group were 84.4%,52.9%,45.6% and 75.2%,50.7%,37.0%(χ2=1.57,P=0.210),respectively.Subset analysis indicated that for the patients of N0 group and whose length of GTV>7 cm, the local control rate of CC was significantly higher than that of radiotherapy alone (χ2=5.11,7.66;P=0.024, 0.006).For N0 group, the survival rate of CC was higher than that of R alone.(χ2=5.07,P=0.024).The incidence of WBC, PLT and HGB reduction for the two groups were 81.9% and 49.0%(χ2=36.45,P=0.000),14.3% and 1.9%(χ2=10.54,P=0.006),and 24.8% and 2.9%(χ2=22.95,P=0.000),respectively.The incidence of nausea, vomiting and constipation for the two groups were 63.8% and 7.7%(χ2=71.52,P=0.000), respectively.The incidence of ≥2 grade esophagitis of CC group and R group were 48.57% and 38.46%(χ2=2.17,P=0.141), respectively.The incidence of ≥2 grade radiation pneumonitis of CC group and R group were 15.24% and 7.69%(8/104)(χ2=2.93,P=0.087),respectively.ConclusionsCompared to radiotherapy alone, the local control rate and overall survival rate of concurrent chemoradiotherapy were not improved significantly, the patients with N0 may be the conspicuous beneficiary.About side effects, only marrow depression and gastrointestinal tract reaction were significantly different between the two groups,the value of addition of concurrent chemoradiotherapy for esophageal carcinoma needs further investigation.