Adenocarcinoma of the esophagus with signet ring cell features portends a poor prognosis.

Background: Adenocarcinoma with signet ring cell (SRC) features has been reported to be a poor prognostic marker in gastric and colorectal carcinomas. Although uncommon in the esophagus, SRC histology, interestingly, has been correlated with improved survival. Our impression has been that the incidence of esophageal adenocarcinomas with SRC features is increasing and is associated with worse outcomes. We hypothesize that patients with SRC histology present with more advanced disease, respond less well to induction therapy, and have decreased survival after resection compared with patients with non-SRC adenocarcinoma.

Methods: The medical records of 151 consecutive patients who underwent resection for adenocarcinoma of the esophagus or gastroesophageal junction in a prospectively maintained database from 1998 to 2011 were reviewed. Outcomes of 23 patients (15%) with SRC histology (21 men, 2 women; average age, 66 years) were compared with 128 patients (85%) with non-SRC adenocarcinoma (116 men, 12 women; average age, 63 years). Overall survival, stage-specific survival, and response to induction therapy were evaluated. Cox regression multivariate analysis was used to identify independent predictors of 3-year survival.

Results: SRC and non-SRC patients were evenly matched for clinical and tumor characteristics. Downstaging achieved with induction therapy was 13.3% (2 of 15) in SRC histology patients vs 67.1% (53 of 79) in non-SRC patients (p ≤ 0.001). Patients with SRC histology who did not respond well to induction treatment demonstrated strong trends toward a worse 3-year survival than patients with non-SRC adenocarcinoma (p = 0.084). The overall 3-year survival was 65.6% in patients without SRC histology vs 34.8% in those with SRC (p = 0.006). Patients with pathologic stage II or III and SRC histology had a 3-year survival of 27.3% compared with 57.4% in patients with non-SRC adenocarcinoma (p = 0.01). Multivariate analysis showed SRC histology trended toward significance as an independent risk factor for poor survival (p = 0.060).

Conclusions: Patients with adenocarcinoma of the esophagus or gastroesophageal junction and SRC histology respond less well to induction therapy and have decreased overall survival compared with patients with non-SRC histology.