Operative treatment for metachronous pulmonary metastasis from esophageal carcinoma

The clinical significance of operative treatment for metachronous pulmonary metastasis from esophageal carcinoma is unclear.

We retrospectively reviewed 23 consecutive patients who underwent operative resection for metachronous pulmonary metastasis from esophageal carcinoma from 1991 to 2008. Patient baseline characteristics, survival probability, and prognostic factors were analyzed. The median follow-up period was 31 months for surviving patients.

There were 19 men and 4 women, with a median age of 66 years at the time of pulmonary resection. The median disease-free interval was 15.5 months. Cervical or mediastinal lymph node metastases preceded pulmonary metastases in 4 patients. Seven patients (30.4%) had multiple metastases with a maximum number of 4. The median operative time and blood loss were 94.5 minutes and 18 mL, respectively. The median length of postoperative stay was 12.5 days. The predicted 1-, 3-, and 5-year survival rates using the Kaplan-Meier method were 73.9%, 43.5%, and 43.5%, respectively, with a median survival time of 28.7 months. Univariate analysis revealed that an extrapulmonary metastasis as the initial recurrence site was an unfavorable prognostic factor (P = .0411). Multivariate analyses, however, did not identify the initial recurrence site as an independent prognostic factor (P = .0542).

Operative resection for metachronous pulmonary metastasis from esophageal carcinoma is an acceptable treatment. This study of a limited number of patients may have created a constitutional selection bias. An antecedent extrapulmonary metastasis was found to be an unfavorable prognostic factor.