• Aaron U Blackham, Binglin Yue, Khaldoun Almhanna, Nadia Saeed, Jacques P Fontaine, Sarah Hoffe, Ravi Shridhar, Jessica Frakes, Domenico Coppola, and Jose M Pimiento.
• Department of Gastrointestinal Oncology, Moffitt Cancer Center and Research Institute, Tampa, Florida.
• J Surg Oncol. 2015 Nov 1; 112 (6): 597-602.

BackgroundThe prognostic significance of residual nodal disease in otherwise complete pathologic responders (ypT0N+) to neoadjuvant chemoradiation (nCRT) for esophageal cancer is unknown.MethodsypT0N+ responders were identified from a single institution database of esophageal cancer patients undergoing esophagectomy and were compared to patients without locoregional disease (ypT0N0) and to non-complete responders (ypT+).ResultsOut of 487 patients, 196 ypT0N0 and 14 ypT0N+ patients were identified. Pre-treatment stage was similar between ypT0N0 and ypT0N+ patients: 66% versus 73% of patients had uT3 disease (P = 0.50) and 76% versus 55% had nodal involvement (P = 0.49), respectively. Locoregional recurrence (43%) was more common in ypT0N+ patients. Median overall survival (OS) was worse in ypT0N+ patients (14.8 months) compared to ypT0N0 patients (92.2 months) and ypT+ patients (38.0 months, P < 0.001). Median OS of ypT0N+ patients was similar to ypT+ stage II (29.6 months, P = 0.84) and stage III (27.5 months, P = 0.95) disease. No difference in median OS existed in patients with residual nodal disease (n = 163) based on local response (14.8 months in ypT0N+ and 22.5 months in ypT+N+ patients, P = 0.55).ConclusionsResidual nodal disease in esophageal cancer patients with complete response in the primary tumor following nCRT portends a poor prognosis and behaves similar to pathologic stage II/III disease.© 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

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