Additional endoscopic treatments for patients with positive lateral margins after endoscopic resection of early esophageal squamous cell carcinoma

. There are currently no well‑established treatment strategies for early esophageal squamous cell carcinoma (ESCC) for patients with only positive lateral margin (LM+) following endoscopic resection (ER). The present study aimed to find a treatment strategy for patients with early ESCC with non‑curative resection (non‑CR) and only LM+ following ER. In total, 511 patients with early ESCC treated at the Fourth Hospital of Hebei Medical University (Shijiazhuang, China) with ER were retrospectively analyzed, 41 of which (8%) were patients with only LM+ after non‑CR. Of these, 28 patients received re‑ER and 13 received additional surgical treatment. The clinicopatho‑ logical characteristics of patients were analyzed and those who underwent additional surgery vs. re‑ER were compared. Residual cancer cells were found in 27 patients (27/41, 65.9%) following re‑ER or additional surgery. A significant increase in residual cancer cells was observed in patients with poorly differentiated cancer and patients with multiple LM+ (P=0.03 and P=0.015, respectively). Older patients and patients with single LM+ tended to choose re‑ER (P=0.023 and P=0.038, respectively). In addition, there were three cases (3/13, 23.1%) of lymph node metastasis in the addi‑ tional surgery group. However, within the limited follow‑up time (mean, 36.1±24.1 months), no recurrence or metastasis was found in the remaining patients. The results showed that re‑ER may be a more suitable additional therapy compared with surgery for patients with LM+ following non‑CR, at least in the medium‑term.