Background: More than half of patients (pts) with locally advanced ESCC would have disease recurrence after curative preoperative chemoradiation (CRT) followed by surgery. Whether recurrence pattern correlates with the post-recurrence survival remains uncertain. Methods: We included 131 pts with locally advanced ESCC (clinical T3N0-1M0 or T1-3N1M0 or M1a according to AJCC 6^thedition) who were enrolled in 3 phase II clinical trials of preoperative CRT followed by surgery and had successfully completed CRT and surgery. These pts received preoperative twice weekly paclitaxel/cisplatin-based CRT with radiotherapy 40Gy given in 20 fractions followed by esophagectomy. When pts had first disease recurrence, we divided them into three groups according to their recurrence patterns: loco-regional recurrence (LRR), distant metastasis only (DM), and both LRR and DM (LRR+DM). Survival outcomes were compared using the Kaplan-Meier curves. Results: With a median follow-up of 34.8 months, 75 pts (57.3%) had disease recurrence (Table 1) and the median post-recurrence survival of these pts is 6.7 months (m). Among them, 24 pts (32.0%) had LRR, 19 (25.3%) pts had DM, and 32 pts (42.7%) had LRR+DM. There is no statistical difference of the post-recurrence survivals (Fig. 1) among 3 groups (5.4, 7.5, 4.9m, p = 0.43 in LRR, DM, and LRR+DM group respectively). It is noteworthy that 4 pts in the DM group with limited distant metastasis (1 had brain metastasis, 3 had lung metastasis) had long post-recurrence survival (56.2+, 51.6+, 13.8+, 13.1+m) after receiving metastasectomy with or without chemotherapy. Conclusions: The post-recurrencesurvival of locally advanced ESCC pts who received preoperative CRT followed by surgerywere similar regardless of recurrence pattern (loco-regional recurrence or both loco-regional and distant failure). However, in pts with limited metastasis, curative metastasectomy might provide the opportunity of achieving long-term survival. (The work was supported by the Grant of MOST 103-2314-B-002-092, MOST 104-2314-B-002-111- and HCH104-024)