Abstract: [Abstract]  Objective  To investigate the effect of surgical and endoscopic treatment on the prognosis of elderly patients with cT1N0M0 esophageal cancer.MethodsThe Surveillance，Epidemiology，and End Results（SEER）database was queried to identify elderly patients（≥75 years）with cT1N0M0 esophageal cancer from 2004 to 2015.The enrolled patients were divided into two groups：esophagectomy（group ES）and endos  copic therapy（group ET） group.Fiveyear overall survival（OS）and cancerspecific survival（CSS）were compared using the life table method，KaplanMeier method was used to draw the survival curve.Multivariate Cox proportional hazards model was used to assess the importance of various covariates.ResultsData from 471 esophageal cancer patients（group ET：n=257，54.6%；group ES：n=214，45.4%）were included.There was an increase  in the proportion of patients who underwent ET from the year of 2004～2009（47.8%）to 2010～2015（60.8%），while ES decreased from 52.2% to 39.2%（both P＜0.05）.There was also an increase in 5year OS（27.4% VS 52.0%，P＜0.05）and CSS（58.1% VS 78.6%，P＜0.05）between the two time intervals.The 5year OS of ES and ET groups were 26.0% VS 38.2%（P＞0.05），while CSS were 65.0% VS 61.9%（P＞0.05）.Multivariate Cox regression analysis showed that esophageal cancer patients who underwent ES did not improve 5year OS（HR：0.763，95%CI：0.573～1.018，P＞0.05）or CSS（HR：0.991，95%CI：0.648～1.516，P＞0.05）compared with those who underwent ET.Conclusion  Endoscopic treatment of esophageal cancer patients with early cT1N0M0 in the elderly is feasible and does not affect 5year OS and CSS in such patients.

Key words: gastrointestinal stromal tumors, literature, bibliometric analysis