LAUSR

Despite progress in treatment modalities, including surgery, chemotherapy, radiotherapy, and perioperative multidisciplinary management, the prognosis of ESCC patients remains poor. Thus, there is an urgent need to identify objective, accurate, and easily measurable prognostic biomarkers for this disease. The albumin–bilirubin (ALBI) score, calculated solely from serum albumin and bilirubin concentrations (log10 serum bilirubin [lmol/ L] 9 0.66) ? (serum albumin [g/L] 9 0.0852), was originally developed to assess the severity of liver dysfunction in patients with hepatocellular carcinoma. Serum albumin and bilirubin levels are routinely measured at low cost during clinical chemistry testing, suggesting that the preoperative ALBI score could be applied as a predictive prognostic factor for ESCC. There have been no reports on the utility of the ALBI score for patients with ESCC. The ALBI score is conventionally categorized into three grades based on best (grade 1) to worst (grade 3) liver function. However, because the liver function of patients with ESCC is usually better than that of hepatocellular carcinoma patients, we expected that most ESCC patients would be classified as ALBI grade 1. Therefore, in the present study, we defined a modified ALBI (mALBI) score tailored for ESCC patients and compared the value of preoperative conventional ALBI and mALBI scores as prognostic markers for long-term outcomes in patients with ESCC after curative esophagectomy.