Reply to “Nodal skip metastasis may undermine the predictive power of topographic pN classification in esophageal squamous cell carcinoma”

We appreciate the comments made by Yang et al1 regarding our recent article.2 They obtained results consistent with ours using their own cohort and reported a lower survival discriminatory ability of topographic nodal classification, especially between JES-pN2 and JES-pN3 patients compared with the numeric classification system. The 2 cohorts are distinctly different in terms of the proportions of advanced stage esophageal squamous cell carcinoma (ESCC) patients, and therefore the superiority of numeric-based pN classification versus the topographic-based system might be accepted regardless of the ESCC cohort.
Source: Surgery - Category: Surgery Authors: Source Type: research