prognostic analysis of clinicopathological factors in patients after radical resection of esophageal carcinoma objective to explore factors affecting the survival in patients after radical resection of esophageal carcinoma and to provide a valuable reference for selecting treatment protocol after surgerymethods clinicopathological data of 618 esophageal cancer patients who underwent radical resection at the fourth hospital of hebei medical university from may 2002 to june 2006 were collected and reviewed in this study all patients had no cancer history did not receive preoperative radiotherapy or chemotherapy and had karnofsky performance scores 70 univariate analysis was performed by using logrank test to determine predictors of survival and multivariable analysis was performed by a cox regression modelresults the overall 1 3 5year survival rates were 8332 5333 3602 respectively and the median survival time was 3833 months the cox regression analysis showed that operation mode intraoperative findings of the extent of tumor invasion pathological t stage and the number of metastatic lymph nodes were significant predictors of survival for patients with lymph node metastasis the overall 1 3 and 5year survival rates did not significantly differ between the operation alone group and the postoperative prophylactic radiotherapy group for patients without lymph node metastasis the 1 3 and 5year survival rates were 9434 5155 and 3441 respectively in the postoperative radiotherapy group significantly higher than those in the operation alone group 6308 2330 and 436 2 1599 p 001conclusions the independent prognostic factors of esophageal cancer patients after radical resection include the operation mode intraoperative findings of the extent of tumor invasion pathological t stage the number of lymph node metastasis and the number of regions of lymph node metastasis postoperative prophylactic radiotherapy is beneficial for esophageal cancer patients with lymph node metastasis