Abstract: Objective : To observe the status of lymph node metastases from carcinoma of the esophagus and cardia and to analyze the related factors. Methods : Clinical data from 1,526 patients with carcinoma of the thoracic esophagus and cardia seen in our hospital between January 1996 and December 2004 were analyzed.Fac-tors including age, tumor location, tumor diameter, pathological classification, depth of tumor invasion, vascu-lar tumor embolus, involvement of other organs, and the status of tumor residues were stratified and analyzed with SPSS13.0 software. Results : Carcinoma of the upper thoracic esophagus mainly metastasized to tho-racic and cervical lymph nodes; carcinoma of the middle-third thoracic esophagus metastasized bidirectional-ly; and carcinoma of the lower-third thoracic esophagus mainly metastasized to the lymph nodes of the lateral esophagus, lateral cardia and gastric artery.The rate of metastasis to lymph nodes of lower-third esophageal cancer was higher than that of upper and middle-third esophageal cancer ( P <0.05).Compared with thoracic esophageal cancer, cardiac carcinoma had a higher rate of metastases to lymph nodes in the abdominal cavi-ty, lateral cardia and gastric artery ( P <0.05).No statistical significance was found in the number of metastases to the lateral esophageal lymph nodes between cardiac carcinoma and thoracic esophageal carcinoma ( P > 0.05).Results of Multiple Factors Logistic Regression Analysis showed that tumor diameter, depth of tumor in-vasion, vascular tumor embolus and the status of carcinoma residues influenced the lymphatic metastasis. Conclusion : Tumor diameter, depth of tumor invasion, vascular tumor embolus and the status of tumor residues are correlated to lymphatic metastases.