Due to insufficient local tumor control in the majority of esophageal carcinoma (EC) patients and due to distant recurrences, the dismal prognosis of patients with EC has not essentially changed during the past two decades. This holds true despite extended surgical procedures and improved radiation techniques. The 2-year survival rates in stage IIB/III which represent two-thirds of the patients with localized EC is still less than 20%. Therefore, clinical efforts in the management of EC focus on combined modality treatment (CTM), usually preoperative chemotherapy (CTx)/chemoradiotherapy (CTx/RTx) or CTx/RTx alone. Up to now, results of CTM in potentially resectable EC have not shown that preoperative CTx or CTx/RTx is superior to surgery alone with respect to resectability, local tumor control and overall survival. However, CTx responders who subsequently underwent a complete tumor resection had a markedly improved long term survival indicating that the inclusion of CTx in the treatment of EC may improve the prognosis. The benefit of CTx could also be demonstrated in a randomized trial comparing RTx alone versus CTx/RTx with a reduction of local and distant failures and significantly improved survival in the CTM arm. Similar observations were made with CTM in locally advanced disease. To date, there is sufficient evidence that preoperative treatment of EC may improve prognosis at least of subgroups of patients with this tumor. However, this has to be confirmed in well designed (proper staging including endoscopic ultrasound, etc.) randomized trials.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)