Abstract：Objective To investigate the effect of the extent of postoperative prophylactic radiotherapy after radical surgery on the long-term survival in patients with thoracic esophageal carcinoma. Methods A retrospective analysis was performed on the clinical data of 201 patients with thoracic esophageal cancer who received postoperative prophylactic radiotherapy after radical surgery from 2000 to 2007. The effect of the extent of radiotherapy on survival was evaluated,and the possible prognostic factors were subjected to multivariate Cox regression analysis. The Kaplan-Meier method was used to calculate overall survival (OS) rates,and the log-rank test was used for survival difference analysis. Results The 5-year follow-up rate was 97.0%. The OS rates for patients who received radiotherapy to the whole mediastinum,whole mediastinum+lymph nodes along the left gastric artery,whole mediastinum+bilateral supraclavicular regions,upper and middle mediastinum+bilateral supraclavicular regions,and whole mediastinum+bilateral supraclavicular regions+lymph nodes along the left gastric artery were 21.7%,37.1%,38.7%,34.8%,and 19.8%,respectively (P=0.406). Multivariate analysis showed that postoperative N stage was the independent prognostic factor (P=0.009). After prophylactic irradiation,metastases to the supraclavicular lymph nodes,lymph nodes in the upper and middle mediastinum,and abdominal lymph nodes were observed in 11,34,and 10 patients,respectively. Conclusions The extent of postoperative prophylactic radiotherapy after radical surgery for thoracic esophageal carcinoma only includes upper and middle mediastinum and bilateral supraclavicular regions.
Xu Jing,Wu Hui,Lu Xiaoxu et al. Prognostic analysis of thoracic esophageal carcinoma treated with postoperative prophylactic radiotherapy[J]. Chinese Journal of Radiation Oncology, 2015, 24(1): 33-35.
2015, Vol. 24 
