Novel milestones for early esophageal carcinoma: From bench to bed

Figure 1 Incidence and progression of esophageal squamous cell carcinoma. The progression of esophageal squamous cell carcinoma in tissues and the corresponding TNM T stage refer to the condition of the primary tumor lesion, with increasing tumor volume, increasing depth of invasion and extent of involvement of adjacent tissues. TIS: High-grade dysplasia; T1: Cancer invading the lamina propria mucosae, muscularis mucosa, or submucosa and divided into T1a (cancer invading the lamina propria mucosae or muscularis mucosa) and T1b (cancer invading the submucosa); T2: Cancer invading the muscularis propria; T3: Cancer invading the adventitia; T4: Cancer invading local structures and classified as T4a (cancer invading adjacent structures such as the pleura) and T4b (cancer invading major adjacent structures such as the aorta). N stage refers to regional lymph node involvement. N0: No regional lymph node metastases, N1: 1-2 regional lymph node metastases, N2: 3-6 regional lymph node metastases, and N3: 7 or more regional lymph node metastases. M stage refers to distant metastases. M0: No distant metastases, M1: Distant metastasis. Citation: The figure was created by author using MedPeer. The authors have obtained the permission for figure using from the medpeer.cn (Supplementary material).