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Updated: Jun 18, 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 metastasis site in patients with thoracic esophageal cancer
Chikara Kunisaki1, Hirochika Makino, Jun Kimura
1Department of Surgery, Gastroenterological Center, Yokohama City University, 4-57 Urafune-cho, Minami-ku, Yokohama 232-0024, Japan. s0714@med.yokohama-cu.ac.jp
Background And Objectives:
We retrospectively compared surgical outcomes between patients with intra-thoracic and extra-thoracic (cervical and abdominal) lymph-node metastasis.
Methods:
The study population comprised 96 patients with lymph-node metastasis who had undergone curative esophagectomy for thoracic esophageal cancer. The patients were grouped according to whether the site of lymph-node metastasis was intra-thoracic, extra-thoracic, or both intra-thoracic and extra-thoracic. The patient characteristics, survival time, and prognostic factors were compared.
Results:
The most significant difference in disease-specific survival was detected at a threshold value of four metastatic lymph nodes. Lymph-node metastasis was observed at intra-thoracic sites in 41 patients, at extra-thoracic sites in 20 patients, and at both intra-thoracic and extra-thoracic sites in 35 patients. Intra-thoracic lymph-node metastasis was frequently observed in patients with middle and upper thoracic esophageal cancer. There was no difference in the number of metastatic lymph nodes between patients with intra-thoracic and extra-thoracic lymph-node metastasis. Multivariate analysis revealed that the number of metastatic lymph nodes was an independent prognostic factor, whereas the site of metastatic lymph nodes was not.
Conclusions:
These findings suggest that the surgical outcomes in patients with thoracic esophageal cancer depend on the number, but not the site, of metastatic lymph nodes after curative esophagectomy.
