Back to Program | 2010 Program and Abstracts Overview | 2010 Posters

Purpose Esophageal resection is still associated with considerable mortality and morbidity. The long-term outcome of esophageal cancer (EC) is poor. We aimed to develop a simple risk score (SRS) for short-term and long-term outcome of EC.Patients and MethodsIn total, 498 patients, without neoadjuvant and adjuvant treatment, were included in this study. Three SRS risk groups were defined based on preoperative functional evaluation of different organ systems by validated tools (revised cardiac risk index, MELD score and pulmonary function test). Patients with good function of all organ systems were allocated to SRS1 group. SRS2 indicated moderate impairment of one organ system and SRS3 reflected moderate impairment of at least two or severe impairment of at least one organ system. Clinicopathological parameters, morbidity, mortality as well as disease-free (DFS) and overall survival (OS) were correlated to SRS. ResultsSRS significantly correlated with the disease-stage (P=0.005) and predicted the short-term outcome. SRS2 and SRS3 patients had at least doubled risk of morbidity and mortality compared to SRS1 patients. Furthermore, increasing SRS score was associated with gradual decrease in DFS (P<0.001) and OS (P<0.001). In nodal-stratified subanalyses SRS identified patients being at higher risk of tumor recurrence and poor survival within the node-negative group. In node-positive patients SRS did not undertake further risk assessment. SRS was identified as an independent prognosticator of tumor recurrence and overall survival.ConclusionSRS is easy to determine and is based on validated tools. SRS allows preoperative objective allocation of patients to different risk profiles for morbidity, mortality and long-term outcome in EC.