Efficacy of adjuvant therapy in 110 patients with N1 lymph node metastasis of esophageal squamous cell carcinoma / 中华肿瘤杂志

ABSTRACT

<p><b>OBJECTIVE</b>The aim of this study was to evaluate the effect of postoperative adjuvant therapy on the survival in patients with N1 lymph node metastasis of esophageal squamous cell carcinoma (ESCC).</p><p><b>METHODS</b>110 patients with positive N1 lymph node metastasis of esophageal squamous carcinoma were included in this study. The surgery group included 46 cases and the postoperative adjuvant therapy group included 64 cases (24 cases in the adjuvant chemotherapy subgroup and 40 cases in the adjuvant concurrent chemoradiotherapy). The disease-free survival (DFS) and overall survival (OS) of the two groups were compared and the prognostic factors were analyzed by multivariate Cox model.</p><p><b>RESULTS</b>In the postoperative adjuvant therapy group, the DFS (16.8 months) and OS (21.3 months) were significantly prolonged compared with those in the surgery group (10.6 months, P=0.007) and (13.7 months, P=0.001), respectively. Postoperative adjuvant chemotherapy significantly extended the OS (31.1 months) of N1-positive patients compared with 13.7 months (P=0.002) in the surgery group. But there were no significant differences between the DFS in the two subgroups (16.3 and 16.8 months, P=0.346) and between the OS (23.4 and 21.3 months, P=0.491). Postoperative adjuvant therapy was an independent prognostic factor in the ESCC patients with N1 lymph node metastasis.</p><p><b>CONCLUSION</b>Postoperative adjuvant therapy can improve the prognosis and prolong the survival time in ESCC patients with positive N1 lymph node metastasis.</p>