Hou J, et al. - In patients with esophageal cancer (EC), researchers evaluated the clinicopathological and prognostic significance of circulating tumor cells (CTCs). The keywords “esophageal cancer”, “circulating tumor cells”, “prognosis”, and “peripheral blood” were searched for PubMed, EMBASE, Science Citation Index Expanded, Cochrane library (from the beginning to July 2018). A significant association was found between CTC-positive patients and TNM staging, depth of infiltration, regional lymph nodes metastasis, distant metastasis, lymphatic invasion, and venous invasion for clinicopathological characteristics. The meta-analysis confirmed the significant clinicopathological and prognostic value of CTC-positive patients with both progression-free survival (PFS) and overall survival (OS) in EC patients.