Abstract: Objective: To explore the accuracy of clinical staging for patients with thoracic esophageal carcinoma,and compared it to the pathological TNM staging. Methods: A total of 58 patients with resectable thoracic esophagealcarcinoma underwent preoperative esophagogram, chest CT scanning and ultrasonography, and then received complete re-section. All of them were diagnosed with squamous cell carcinoma. Pathological TNM staging showed that there were 28Ⅱa cases(48.3%), 2 Ⅱb cases(3.4%), 27 Ⅲ cases(46.6%), and 1 Ⅳ cases(1.7%). Clinical TNM staging showed that therewere 27 Ⅱ cases (46.6%), 28 Ⅲ cases (48.3%), and 3 Ⅳ cases(5.2%). Results: There was a significant correlation be-tween pathological N stage and clinical N stage (r=0.285, P=0.030). A correlation was also found between pathologicalTNM and clinical TNM staging (r=0.289, P=0.028). No correlation was found between pathological T stage and clinical Tstage. There were 30 patients (51.7%) with pathologically proved lymph node metastasis and 33 patients (56.9%) with en-largement of lymph nodes in chest CT scanning. The number of enlarged lymph nodes and the length of local tumor wereincreased as the stages advanced. We observed a clearly correlation between the clinical T stage and the number of en-larged lymph nodes in CT, and the number of pathological positive lymph nodes. Conclusion: There are definite correla-tion and accordance between the two systems of staging but some differences exist in the T stages for patients at earlystage. Endoscopic ultrasonography may be useful in reducing the disparity.