Background The effectiveness of chemoradiotherapy followed by surgery (CRTS) in patients with resectable esophageal carcinoma remains controversial.We performed a systematic review of the literature with meta-analysis.Methods Electronic databases were used to identify published studies between January 1992 and April 2012.Pooled relative risk (RR) with 95％ confidence interval (95％ CI) was utilized to estimate the strength of the association between CRTS and surgery alone (SA) survival of the resectable esophageal carcinoma patients.Heterogeneity and publication bias were also assessed in the present study.Results The final analysis of 2755 resectable esophageal carcinoma cases from 21 randomized controlled trials (RCTs) are presented.Compared to the SA group,the 1,3-and 5-year survival rates were significantly higher in the CRTS group (all P ＜0.05); the 3-and 5-year survival rates for the East patients,West patients,patients undergoing concurrent chemoradiotherapy,patients with squamous cell carcinoma,patients undergoing High-dose radiotherapy (≥40 Gy),and patients given either cisplatin + Fluorouracil or cisplatin + paclitaxel chemotherapy were significantly higher in the CRTS group (all P ＜0.05).There were no statistical significances in the 3-and 5-year survival rates for patients undergoing sequential chemoradiotherapy or patients with adenocarcinoma between the two groups (all P ＞0.05).Compared to the RCTS group,the surgery rate in the SA group was higher (P ＜0.05),while the CRTS group had significantly higher radical resection rate,R0 resection rate and lower postoperative local recurrence rate (all P ＜0.05).The differences in postoperative complication incidence,post-operative distant metastasis and postoperative mortality rate were not statistically significant between the two groups (all P ＞0.05).Conclusion CRTS can significantly improve the survival and surgical conditions of patients with resectable esophageal carcinoma.