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Nodal status is well known to be the most important prognostic factor for esophageal cancer patients, even if they are treated with neoadjuvant therapy. To establish an optimal postoperative adjuvant strategy for patients, we aimed to more accurately predict the prognosis of patients and systemic recurrence by using clinicopathological factors, including nodal status, in patients with esophageal cancer who received neoadjuvant chemotherapy. The clinicopathological factors associated with survival and systemic recurrence were investigated in 488 patients with esophageal squamous cell carcinoma who received neoadjuvant chemotherapy. Overall survival differed according to tumor depth, nodal status, tumor regression, and lymphovascular (LV) invasion. In the multivariate analysis, nodal status and LV invasion were identified as independent prognostic factors (P  < 0.0001, P  = 0.0008). Nodal status was also identified as an independent factor associated with systemic recurrence, although LV invasion was a borderline factor (P  = 0.066). In each pN stage, patients with LV invasion showed significantly worse overall survival than those without LV invasion (pN0: P  = 0.036, pN1: P  = 0.0044, pN2: P  = 0.0194, pN3: P  = 0.0054). Patients with LV invasion were also more likely to have systemic, and any recurrence than those without LV invasion in each pN stage. Pathological nodal status and LV invasion were the most important predictors of survival and systemic recurrence in patients with esophageal cancer who underwent neoadjuvant chemotherapy followed by surgery. This finding could provide useful information about selecting candidates for adjuvant therapy among these patients. Our analysis showed that LV invasion was an independent prognostic factor in patients with esophageal cancer who underwent neoadjuvant chemotherapy and that combining LV invasion with pathological nodal status makes it possible to stratify the prognosis in those patients. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Silicon nanowires (Si-NWs) have been fabricated at wafer-scale with Au nanoparticles as catalysts at 500 °C using a chemical-vapor-deposition (CVD) method combined with a high-speed rotation wafer-disk. High resolution TEM and SAED patterns were used to characterize the microstructures of the grown Si-NWs. Single crystalline Si-NWs appear self-oriented on Si (100) substrates along the ＜111＞ growth axis. The nanowires have a uniform diameter of 50 nm and varying lengths and densities depending on the rotation speed of the wafer substrate. The effects of wafer-rotation speed on the growth of Si-NWs are discussed. Due to a reduced boundary layer thickness, fast mass transport leads to both an enhanced growth rate and density of the Si-NWs. Moreover, the density of the Si-NW array is optimized to achieve a low reflectance loss for their further application in tandem solar cells as the light-trapping layer. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]