Validation of the eighth clinical American Joint Committee on Cancer stage grouping for esophageal cancer.

AIM: To validate the American Joint Committee on Cancer (AJCC) clinical staging system for esophageal cancer using Surveillance, Epidemiology and End Results database.

METHODS: Cancer-specific survival analyses for clinically-staged patients with esophageal cancer according to both seventh and eighth editions were conducted through Kaplan-Meier analysis.

RESULTS: For cancer-specific survival according to both seventh and eighth clinical systems, p-values for pairwise comparisons were nonsignificant in many comparisons. C-index for adenocarcinoma was: 0.671 according to the seventh AJCC and 0.671 according to the clinical eighth AJCC. C-index for squamous cell carcinoma according to the seventh AJCC was: 0.634 and 0.643 according to clinical eighth AJCC.

CONCLUSION: Minimal improvement was achieved by the eighth clinical AJCC staging system for esophageal cancer.