Qi Z, Hu Y, Qiu R, et al. - Researchers investigated the risk factors that contribute to the low survival of patients with pT _1–3 N ₀ M ₀ esophageal squamous cell carcinoma (ESCC), via this retrospective analysis. They studied pT _1–3 N ₀ M ₀ ESCC patients who only had R0 esophagectomy with two-field lymphadenectomy from January 2008 to December 2012. Overall 488 patients were analyzed. The 5-year overall survival (OS), disease-free survival (DFS), recurrence-free survival (RFS) and locoregional recurrence-free survival (LRFS) rates were estimated to be 62.1, 53.1, 58.3 and 65.6%, respectively. The independent risk factors for OS included patient age, site of the lesion, small mediastinal lymph nodes in CT imaging (SLNs in CT), dissected lymph nodes, and stage of esophageal malignancy, as revealed in the multivariate Cox analysis. Among these factors, those recognized as independent factors for DFS, RFS and LRFS were: the site of the lesion, SLNs in CT and stage of the cancer. Overall, various factors were identified to be related to survival of patients with pT _1–3 N ₀ M ₀ ESCC who had extended esophagectomy with two-field lymphadenectomy. Findings revealed a contribution of these factors to the recursive partitioning analysis scoring system, which could stratify the risk of postoperative survival as well as may expedite the start of postoperative adjuvant treatment.