Pathologic complete response is not equivalent to cure in esophageal cancer

We thank the authors of the editorial commentary entitled “Recurrence in complete responders after trimodality therapy in esophageal cancer”, for their thoughtful review and critical appraisal of our manuscript. Our study examined recurrence in patients with esophageal cancer (EC) that achieved pathologic complete response (pCR) following trimodality therapy, with the aim of evaluating potential predictors of recurrence.