Lymphovascular invasion predicts disease-specific survival in node-negative esophageal squamous cell carcinoma patients after minimally invasive esophagectomy.

Lymphovascular invasion (LVI) is reported to be a potential prognostic predictor in esophageal squamous cell carcinoma (ESCC) patients.

To investigate the prognostic value of LVI in ESCC node-negative patients after minimally invasive esophagectomy (MIE).

1406 consecutive ESCC patients who underwent MIE were reviewed retrospectively. After exclusion, 880 patients were enrolled, and 298 node-negative patients were used for the further analysis. The Kaplan-Meier method was used to examine the survival difference. Univariate and multivariate analyses were performed to identify prognostic predictors.

LVI was observed in 29.4% of all patients. Totally, the proportion of LVI was increased with advanced T (p < 0.01) and N (p < 0.01) stage and poor tumor differentiation (p < 0.01). In the node-negative patients, a similar result was obtained in T stage (p = 0.0252) and tumor differentiation (p = 0.0080). In survival analysis, the disease-specific survival (DSS) (p = 0.0146) rate was significantly lower in node-negative patients with LVI than in those without. The difference was absent when calculating disease-free survival (DFS) (p = 0.0796). Additionally, the presence of LVI was associated with lower DSS (p = 0.0187) but not DFS (p = 0.0785) in univariate analysis in node-negative patients. Moreover, in multivariate Cox regression analysis, the presence of LVI was identified as an independent prognostic factor only in DSS (p = 0.0496) but not in DFS (p = 0.5670) in node-negative patients.

LVI is associated with shorter DSS and an independent prognostic factor in ESCC node-negative patients after MIE.