RESUMEN
OBJECTIVE: To identify the relation of microvascular density (MVD) to the early postoperative recurrence and metastasis of T1 esophageal squamous cell carcinoma, and to determine whether MVD could be a prognostic predictor of esophageal squamous cell carcinoma. METHODS: Patients with T1 esophageal squamous cell carcinoma were enrolled. Immunohistochemistry with primary antibody against CD-34 was performed to count MVD. ROC curve was plotted and appropriate cutoff value was determined to evaluate the potential power of MVD in predicting early recurrence and metastasis of T1 esophageal squamous cell carcinoma. Survival curves were drawn by the Kaplan-Meier method and significance were tested by the Mantel-Cox test. RESULTS: A total of 37 patients with T1 esophageal squamous cell carcinoma were enrolled. The MVD of T1 esophageal squamous cell carcinoma patients with early metastasis was significantly higher than that of T1 esophageal squamous cell carcinoma patients without early metastasis (65.83±4.39 vs. 42.26±2.34, p<0.001). MVD was available in distinguishing whether patients with early esophageal are prone to postoperative recurrence or metastasis (AUC=0.861; 95% CI 0.738-0.984, p<0.001), with 88.89% sensitivity and 68.42% specificity of MVD being obtained when the cut-off is 44.5. Kaplan-Meier survival curves showed that patients with a higher MVD had a lower survival (37.35 months) compared with those with low MVD (40.79 months) (p<0.05). CONCLUSIONS: MVD could be a promising indicator for early postoperative recurrence and metastasis of T1 esophageal squamous cell carcinoma and the prognosis of these patients.