Abstract.Postoperative radiotherapy has shown positive efficacy in lowering the recurrence rate and improving the survival rate in cases involving lymph node (LN) metastasis. However, the radiotherapy target volume remains controversial. Certain published studies have paid more attention to LNs found to be affected during surgery, while little effort has been made to study the LN metastatic pattern following surgery and its influence on the determination of the target volume of postoperative radiotherapy. In this study, the locoregional recurrence of esophageal squamous cell cancer was examined in 134 patients receiving radical surgery with two-field lymph node dissection from 2004 to 2009. In the 134 cases of recurrence, LN metastasis occurred in 126 patients (94.0%) while 13 patients (9.7%) developed anastomotic recurrence and 5 patients (3.7%) experienced tumor bed recurrence. The difference among the groups was statistically significant (P= 0.000). In the 126 cases with lymph node metastasis, the mediastinal metastasis rate (80.2%) was significantly higher compared with the rate of supraclavicular metastasis and abdominal metastasis (P= 0.000). A significant difference was identified between right and left supraclavicular LN metastasis (31.7% vs 16.7%, P= 0.005). Furthermore, the difference between the metastatic rates in the upper (73.8%), middle (39.7%) and lower mediastinum (1.6%) was statistically significant (P= 0.000). Nevertheless, no significant correlation between the rate of LN metastasis was observed in the supraclavicular, mediastinal and abdominal regions for upper, middle and lower thoracic carcinomas (P= 0.404, P= 0.718 and P= 0.169, respectively). Based on our data, LN metastasis is the major locoregional recurrence pattern for esophageal squamous cell cancer following radical surgery. The high-risk lymphatic drainage areas include the supraclavicular nodes, recurrent laryngeal nerve nodes, azygos nodes and subcarinal nodes.
IntroductionSurgery is the mainstay treatment for resectable esophageal cancer. Although the long-term survival rate associated with esophageal cancer remains at approximately 15% worldwide (1), certain recent studies have described an increase in the overall 5-year survival rate of 40% or more following esophagectomy with three-field lymphadenectomy (2), but with more complications. Postoperative radiotherapy has shown positive efficacy in lowering the recurrence rate and improving the survival rate in cases involving lymph node (LN) metastasis (3-5), although it remains unknown whether postoperative radiotherapy improves survival in all cases (3,6). Reasons for this controversy may be the undetermined target volume or insensitivity of the tissue to radiotherapy due to ischemia and hypoxia following surgery. A large T-shaped field was first used which encompassed the bilateral supraclavicular fossi, mediastinum and left gastric nodes. In recent years, the large T-shaped field was modified into a smaller T-shaped field to reduce unacceptable complication rates by omitting...