The results demonstrate that 71.6% (78/109) of patients with low TRIM24 expression have lymph node metastasis (LNM) while only 28.4% (31/109) of patients with high expression have LNM (P=0.024, Table 1); 71.4% (70/98) of ones with low expression have pathological tumour-node-metastasis stage (pTNM stage) III while only 28.6% (28/98) of ones with high expression have pTNM stage III (P=0.046, Table 1), suggesting that TRIM24 may inhibit ESCC progression. This evidence concerns the gene TRIM24 and metastasis.