Clinical data from patients with ESCA were further collected, to analyze the relationship between EFNA1 expression and ESCA clinical parameters, which showed that EFNA1 expression was associated with TNM staging (P = 0.021), lymph node metastasis (P = 0.043), and invasion depth (P = 0.024) (Fig. 3A–C, supplementary table 1). This evidence concerns the gene EFNA1 and metastatic malignant neoplasm in the lymph nodes.