Objective: To investigate the relationship between postoperative complications and long-term survival in patients with surgically resected esophageal squamous cell carcinoma (ESCC).
Summary background data: Esophagectomy is the mainstay of curative treatment for ESCC; however, this complex procedure has high risks of postoperative morbidity and mortality. The impact of postoperative complications on long-term survival of such patients remains controversial.
Methods: This retrospective single institution study included 502 consecutive patients who had undergone resection of ESCC. The Cox proportional hazard model was used to compute the hazard ratio (HR) for mortality.
Results: Postoperative complications (≥Clavien-Dindo classification grade 2) occurred in 217 patients (43%). Overall, postoperative complications did not affect long-term clinical outcomes of these patients. However, patients with pulmonary complications had worse overall survival than those without pulmonary complications [log rank P = 0.0002; univariate HR = 1.51, 95% confidence interval (CI) 1.20-1.88, P = 0.0006; multivariate HR = 1.60, 95% CI 1.05-2.38, P = 0.029]. The effect of pulmonary complications was not significantly modified by clinical or pathological features (P for all assessed interactions >0.05). In addition, postoperative chylothorax was also associated with poor overall survival (log rank P = 0.0021), whereas surgical site infection, recurrent nerve paralysis, cardiovascular complication, and anastomotic leakage were not.
Conclusions: Postoperative pulmonary complications may be an independent predictor of poorer long-term survival in patients undergoing resection of ESCCs.