Expanding the role of endoscopic resection in esophageal gastrointestinal stromal tumors: Insights and challenges

Table 1 Summary of endoscopic resection outcomes in published series of esophageal gastrointestinal stromal tumors

Ref.	Number of patients	Tumor size1 (mm)	Tumor location (%)	Technique, n (%)	En bloc resection	Complications	Comments
Zhou et al[17], 2020	16	12 (6-21)	Upper 25, middle 31, lower 44	ESD 8 (50), STER 8 (50)	Not specified	Perforation: 3 (19%), Bleeding: 1 (6%)	No recurrence of malignant gastrointestinal stromal tumor during the 28 months of follow-up
Mohammadi et al[9], 2021	11	33 (22-60)	Upper 9, middle 36, lower 18, not specified 36	Enucleation - not further specified	Not specified	No 91%, not specified 9%	Tumor rupture was observed in 1 patient, who had undergone enucleation, of a 6.0 cm tumor
Lian et al[12], 2024	23	23 (10-40)	Upper 13, middle 52, lower 35	STER: 23 (100)	23 (100%)	One patient with a 3 cm tumor experienced significant intraoperative bleeding	No signs of disease progression during a median follow-up of 31 months (range 13-47 months)
Zhu et al[13], 2024	15	30 (10-75)	Not mentioned but the majority in lower oesophagus	ESD 4 (27), STER 9 (60), EMBL 2 (13)	Not mentioned	Minimal	Single-center study -compared endoscopic and surgical treatment
Xu et al[10], 2025	32	21 (8-27)	Upper 6, middle 31, lower 63	STER and EFTR	31/32 (97%)	Hydrothorax 4/32; post-ESD electrocoagulation syndrome 5/32	The largest published series to date, but with significantly small tumor sizes

¹Mean value (range).

ESD: Endoscopic submucosal dissection; STER: Submucosal tunneling endoscopic resection; EMBL: Endoscopic muscularis-basal layer dissection; EFTR: Endoscopic full-thickness resection.