Abstract: Objective To explore the potential role of metastasis?associated lung adenocarcinoma transcript1(MALAT1) expression in the prognosis of middle thoracic esophageal squamous cell cancer (ESCC) patients who received radical resection. Methods The expression of MALAT1 were evaluated in cancer tissues and paired adjacent normal tissues from 77 middle thoracic ESCC patients who received radical surgical resection using qRT-PCR. The correlation between the expression levels of MALAT1 and clinicopathological features and patients' survival were also analysed. Results MALAT1 expression was increased in ESCC tissues than that in adjacent normal tissues (P<0.001). MALAT1 level was positively related to pathological T (pT) stage (P=0.01). Kaplan-Meier analysis showed high expression levels ofMALAT1 were correlated with poor prognosis of ESCC patients. Patients with high MALAT1 expressionhad shorter DFS and OS than those with low MALAT1 expression (P=0.04 and 0.038). Multivariate analysisshowed that the HR of MALAT1 expression was 1.76 (95%CI=0.92-3.23, P=0.08) for DFS and 1.71 (95%CI=0.93-3.12, P=0.08) for OS. Conclusion MALAT1 expression may be a predictive marker for middle thoracic ESCC patients who received radical resection.