【Abstract】 Objective To evaluate the effect of radiotherapy on mediastinal metastasis from esophageal carcinoma after surgery. Methods From 2010 to 2014, 47 patients were treated with postoperative irradiation. Among them, there were 37 males and 10 females, aged 38 to 80 years. The lesion was located in 5 cases of the upper chest, 40 cases in the chest and 2 in the lower chest. The postoperative stage Ⅱ was 29 cases and stageⅢ was 18 cases. 47 cases of postoperative pathological diagnosis were squamous cell carcinomas. There were 31 cases of pure radiotherapy and 16 cases of chemotherapy. Results The survival rates of 1, 2 and 3 years after treatment were 581%, 36% and 194%， respectively. Single factor analysis showed that the preoperative site, radiotherapy dose and postoperative stage had significant effect on prognosis (P＜0.05). The patient's sex, tumor length, radiotherapy and chemotherapy were not related to the prognosis. COX regression analysis showed that the postoperative stage and radiation dose were independent prognostic factors (P＜ 0.05). Conclusion The dose of esophageal lesion and radiotherapy is the main prognostic factor of the metastatic lymph node metastasis after esophageal carcinoma.