Definitive chemoradiotherapy versus neoadjuvant chemoradiotherapy followed by surgery in patients with locally advanced esophageal squamous cell carcinoma who achieved clinical complete response when induction chemoradiation finished: A phase II random

•More than 40% of patients with esophageal squamous cell carcinoma (ESCC) exhibit pathological complete responses after neoadjuvant chemoradiotherapy (nCRT), and theoretically, active surveillance could be feasible in these patients.•Compared with nCRT followed by surgery, definitive chemoradiotherapy was associated with equal survival for patients with ESCC who achieved clinical complete responses to induction chemoradiotherapy according to our criteria.•Clinical response evaluation in our study predicted postoperative pathological response with a higher accuracy which results in an overall accuracy of 86.1%.