Fig. 3

Overall survival among different single station LNM. Overall survival curves were used to explore the prognostic significance of different lymph nodes metastasis. Kaplan–Meier method, and the log-rank test was used to construct the curves. Single station LNM refers to only one lymph node metastasis. P value between left gastric artery LNM and subcarinal LNM is 0.014; P value between left gastric artery LNM and recurrent laryngeal nerve LNM is 0.417; P value between subcarinal LNM and recurrent laryngeal nerve LNM is 0.006