Prognosis impact of clinical characteristics in patients with inoperable esophageal squamous cell carcinoma

BACKGROUND Patients with inoperable esophageal squamous cell carcinoma (ESCC) were not homogeneous and their outcomes were widely divergent. There was a lack of identified clinical factors related to prognosis; and there were no previous studies constructing prognosis score to predict survival and guide treatment. METHODS In this retrospective cohort study, twelve clinical characteristics of one hundred and twenty inoperable ESCC patients were collected at diagnosis and analyzed by Cox regression model. Various methods including univariate analysis, confounding adjusted multivariate analysis and model selection were applied to determine factors associated with poor prognosis; and prognosis score was built on established factors. RESULTS Four characters were identified as poor prognosis factors, including mid- and low-thoracic tumor (aHR = 2.20, 95% CI = 1.03, 4.72), abdominal and retroperitoneal lymph node metastasis (aHR = 1.62, 95% CI = 1.00, 2.64), albumin no more than 39g/L (aHR = 2.81, 95% CI = 1.24, 6.41) and hematogenous metastasis (aHR = 1.61, 95% CI = 0.97, 2.69). Patients were stratified into three groups by prognosis score, that was, good survival with none of four identified factors (score zero), poor survival with three to four factors (score three to four) and median with one to two factors (score one to two), survival of three groups were statistically different (ptrend = 0.020). CONCLUSION Prognosis score based on selected clinical characteristics could predict survival among inoperable ESCC patients, which was critical for individualized treatment and central of precise medicine.