Recently, Glut1 (human erythrocyte glucose transporter) expression has been demonstrated in various tumors. The aim of this study is to evaluate the prognostic utility of Glut1 expression in esophageal carcinomas. We studied Glut1 expression by immunohistochemistry of paraffin sections from 63 esophageal squamous cell carcinomas. All 63 carcinomas expressed Glut1. The mean percentage of positively stained tumor cells was 77.8% (median, 84.7%). There were two staining patterns in positive cells: 'strongly positive' and 'weakly positive'. The percentage of 'strongly positive' cells (%Glut1-SP) ranged from 0% to 95.6% (mean, 32.3%; median, 27.4%). The 5-year survival rate for patients with a high %Glut1-SP (> 30%) was significantly lower than that for patients with a low %Glut1-SP (< 30%) (P < 0.01). Statistical analysis revealed that the relative risk of death for patients with high %Glut1-SP was 2.02 times that for patients with low %Glut1-SP (P = 0.064), suggesting a possible independent predictive value for %Glut1-SP.

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Elderly patients who underwent an esophagectomy in the later period appeared to manifest less neoadjuvant treatment, less surgical stress, fewer postoperative complications, and a better long-term survival than those treated in the earlier period.

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Based on logistic regression analysis, T3/T4 tumors and recurrent nerve node metastasis were possible risk factors for cervical node metastasis.