Mapping Patterns of Nodal Metastases in Esophageal Carcinoma: Rethinking the Clinical Target Volume for Supraclavicular Nodal Irradiation

Overview

Journal J Thorac Dis

Publisher AME Publishing Company

Specialty Pulmonary Medicine

Date 2017 Jan 10

PMID 28066592

Citations 3

Authors

Yijun Luo

Yuhui Liu

Xiaoli Wang

Bin Zhang

Jinming Yu

Chengang Wang

Yong Huang

Minghuan Li

Affiliations

Soon will be listed here.

Abstract

Background: To map detail distribution of metastatic supraclavicular (SCV) lymph nodes (LN) in esophageal cancer (EC) patients and determine the precise radiation therapy clinical target volume (CTV).

Methods: A total of 101 thoracic esophageal carcinoma patients after surgery experienced SCV LN metastasis were retrospectively examined. The SCV region is further divided into four subgroups. Using hand drawings registration, nodes were mapped to a template computed tomogram to provide a visual impression of nodal frequencies and anatomic distribution.

Results: In all, 158 nodes were considered to be clinical metastatic in the SCV region in the 101 patients, 74 on the left and 84 on the right. Seven of 158 (4.4%) positive LN were located in group I, 78 of 158 (49.37%) were located in group II, 72 of 158 nodes (45.6%) were located in group III, 1 of 158 (0.63%) located in group IV.

Conclusions: According to our results, the SCV group II and group III are considered to be the high risk regions of esophageal squamous cell carcinoma (ESCC) LN metastasis, which were defined as elective nodal irradiation (ENI) areas.

Citing Articles

Supraclavicular lymph node metastasis in esophageal carcinoma: a topic of ongoing controversy.

Zhang B, Zhang H, Chen Y, Xia W, Wang Y Front Oncol. 2025; 15:1527625.

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Supraclavicular lymph node metastasis should not be defined as regional lymph node metastasis in cervical and upper thoracic esophageal squamous cell carcinoma.

Zeng H, Zhu M, Sun Y, Deng L, Fu W, Li S Oncol Lett. 2024; 28(4):462.

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Mapping patterns of metastatic lymph nodes for postoperative radiotherapy in thoracic esophageal squamous cell carcinoma: a recommendation for clinical target volume definition.

Yu J, Ouyang W, Li C, Shen J, Xu Y, Zhang J BMC Cancer. 2019; 19(1):927.

PMID: 31533656 PMC: 6749673. DOI: 10.1186/s12885-019-6065-7.

Effects of lymph node metastasis of thoracic esophageal squamous cell carcinoma on design of radiotherapy target volume.

Pan G, Pan H, Zhang Y, Shuai H Pak J Med Sci. 2019; 35(1):177-182.

PMID: 30881419 PMC: 6408628. DOI: 10.12669/pjms.35.1.431.

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