Most of the times, symptoms of esophageal cancer begin to emerge after the cancer is very advanced; this makes the treatment difficult, and causes low survival rates. Esophageal cancer prognosis is often alarming; 5-year survival rate for esophageal cancer is estimated at 5%.
Esophageal cancer is about four times more frequent among men than it is in women; blacks are nearly 2 times more likely to have the disease than whites do. The 5-year survival rate for esophageal cancer is about:
- 18% for Caucasians
- 11% for African-Americans.