In our institute, patients were followed up in the outpatient department. X-ray or computed tomography of the chest was performed during the follow-up. As this study described see more the prognosis of patients with ESCC, therefore, a cancer-specific survival (CSS) analysis would be more appropriate. Therefore, the CSS was ascertained in this study. The last follow-up time was November 2011. Routine laboratory measurements including the serum levels of CRP, albumin, and

blood cell counts were extracted in a retrospective fashion from the medical records. GPS was calculated as follows: patients with elevated CRP (> 10 mg/l) and hypoalbuminemia (< 35 g/l) were assigned to GPS2. Patients with one or no abnormal value were assigned to GPS1 or GPS0, respectively [8]. COP-NLR was calculated as follows: patients with elevated platelet count level (> 300 × 109/l) and NLR (> 3) were assigned to COP-NLR2. Patients with one or no abnormal value were assigned to COP-NLR1 or COP-NLR0, respectively [13]. Statistical evaluation was conducted

with SPSS 17.0 (Chicago, IL). The Pearson Chi-squared test was used to determine the significance of differences. Correlation analysis was performed by Pearson and Spearman correlation analyses. CSS was calculated by the Kaplan-Meier method, and the difference was assessed by the log-rank test. A univariate analysis was used to examine the association between various prognostic predictors and CSS. Possible prognostic factors associated with CSS on univariate analysis were considered in a multivariable Cox proportional hazards regression analysis with the INCB024360 concentration enter method. Moreover, the Akaike information criterion (AIC) and Ribonucleotide reductase Bayesian information criteria (BIC) were used to identify the statistical model [15] and [16]. AIC was defined as AIC = − 2log(maximum likelihood) + 2 × (the number of parameters in the model). BIC was defined as BIC = − 2log(maximum likelihood) + (the number of parameters in the model)

× log(sample size). A smaller AIC or BIC value indicates a more desirable model for predicting the outcome. A P value less than .05 was considered to be statistically significant. Among the 375 patients with ESCC, 49 (13.1%) were women and 326 (86.9%) were men. The mean age was 59.1 ± 7.8 years, with an age range from 36 to 80 years. All of the clinicopathologic characteristics were comparable between patients grouped by GPS and COP-NLR, as shown in Table 1 and Table 2. There were significant differences between the GPS and COP-NLR groups in tumor length (P < .001), depth of invasion (P < .001), and nodal metastasis (P < .001). In addition, an elevated COP-NLR was also associated with higher differentiation (P = .006). The 5-year CSS was 38.1% in our study. The 5-year CSS in patients with GPS0, 1, and 2 was 50.0%, 27.0%, and 12.5%, respectively (GPS0 vs GPS1, P < .001; GPS1 vs GPS2, P = .035; Figure 1).