• Jessica Whibley, Christopher J Peters, Laura J Halliday, Asif M Chaudry, and William H Allum.
• Department of Physiotherapy, The Royal Marsden Hospital, Fulham Rd, London, SW3 6JJ, UK. Electronic address: Jessica.whibley@rmh.nhs.uk.
• Eur J Surg Oncol. 2018 May 1; 44 (5): 594-599.

IntroductionEsophageal and gastric cancer have a poor prognosis and surgical intervention is associated with considerable morbidity, highlighting the need for careful preoperative assessment. The Incremental Shuttle Walk Test (ISWT) and Cardiopulmonary exercise testing (CPET) can assess preoperative fitness. This study aims to investigate their correlation with both postoperative respiratory complications and overall survival.Patients And MethodsPatients were identified who underwent esophageal or gastric resections for cancer between 2010 and 2014 and had ISWT and/or CPET assessments. Tumor differentiation, stage, postoperative respiratory complications, and outcome were documented and then correlated with the results of the preoperative fitness assessments.ResultsNeither the ISWT result, anaerobic threshold (AT) nor VO2 Max correlated well with perioperative complications. However, ISWT (p < 0.001), AT (p < 0.001) and VO2 Max (p < 0.001) all correlated strongly with overall survival. No patient with a score of less than 350 m on ISWT survived beyond 3 years. In a subset of patients with ISWT results both pre and post chemotherapy (n = 49), those that had an improvement in result had a 19% incidence of post-operative respiratory complications compared to 45% where the result did not change or declined, though due to small numbers this only approached significance (p = 0.08).ConclusionISWT and CPET can be useful preoperative tools to predict overall survival for patients undergoing esophago-gastric resection. Furthermore, patients that improve their functional status during chemotherapy seem to do better than those where it remains static or declines.Copyright © 2018 Elsevier Ltd, BASO ~ The Association for Cancer Surgery, and the European Society of Surgical Oncology. All rights reserved.

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