Takeuchi M, et al. - Researchers assessed how postoperative pneumonia is associated with long-term outcomes of definitive chemoradiotherapy followed by salvage esophagectomy. Additionally, using a survival classification and regression tree (CART), a prediction model was developed for overall survival (OS) and disease-free survival (DFS). They identified 93 patients who underwent CRT followed by esophagectomy for thoracic esophageal cancer; 49 patients and 44 patients were included in the salvage and neoadjuvant groups, respectively. Compared to the neoadjuvant group, patients from the salvage group tended to have a lower OS. As per multivariate analyses, postoperative pneumonia adversely affected both OS and DFS following salvage esophagectomy. In the salvage group using survival CART, they generated the prediction model. For predicting the OS, postoperative pneumonia was identified to be the most important parameter. They suggest developing ways to decrease pulmonary complications to improve OS after salvage surgery.