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Updated: Jun 20, 2026
Draining Lymph Node Metastasis Model for Assessing the Dynamics of Antigen-Specific CD8+ T Cells During Tumorigenesis
Published on: January 26, 2024
Impact of lymph node involvement in T2 or T3 thoracic esophageal squamous cell carcinoma
Hideaki Shimada1, Shinichi Okazumi, Tooru Shiratori
1Division of Gastroenterological Surgery, Chiba Cancer Center, 666-2 Nitona-Chou, Chuou-ku, Chiba 260-8717, Japan. hshimada@faculty.chiba-u.jp
Background/Aims:
Treatment strategy for T2/ T3 esophageal carcinoma has become controversial because of recent improvements in chemoradiation therapy. Only a few study analyzed the prognostic impact of clinicopathological factors for surgical outcome of patients with esophageal carcinoma focused on T2/T3 tumors.
Methodology:
Subjects of this study were 187 patients with pathological T2 (n = 46) or pathological T3 (n = 141) thoracic esophageal squamous cell carcinoma who received surgical treatment without neoadjuvant therapy. The impact of clinicopathological factors on survival was evaluated by univariate and multivariate analysis.
Results:
Overall 5-year survival rate of all patients was 38%. Dismal 5-year overall survival rates were observed in patients with 5 or more positive nodes (11%). Multivariate analysis indicated that lymph node metastases (hazard ratio; 2.07, 95%IC, 1.20-3.56, p < 0.01) and the number of metastatic nodes (hazard ratio; 1.77, 95%IC, 1.11-2.82, p = 0.02) were independent risk factors for poor survival. However, tumor depth itself was not an independent risk factor for survival.
Conclusions:
Although survival of patients with pathological T2 or T3 was partly dependent on tumor depth, it was mainly dependent on lymph node status. Multiple positive nodes were independent risk factors for poor survival.
