Abstract: Objective：To identify the prognostic value of nodal skip metastasis (NSM) for 5-year overall survival (OS) in the patients with esophageal squamous cell carcinoma (ESCC) after radical surgery, and to compare the predictive value of lymph node metastasis staging by two different criteria (AJCC/UICC and JSED) for the survival of patients after operation. Methods：The clinical data of 356 patients with primary thoracic ESCC, lymph node metastasis, and no other metastasis (TxN>0M0) confirmed by postoperative pathology from January 2007 to December 2010 were retrospectively analyzed. NSM occurred in 25.6% (91 cases) of 356 patients. Log-rank survival analysis and Cox multivariate analysis were used to seek the influencing factors of postoperative 5-year OS in patients. Then the tendency score matching (PSM) was further performed to evaluate the prognostic significance of NSM. Cox model and C-index were used to compare the predictive value of AJCC/UICC guideline and JSED guideline N staging for the survival of patients. Results：Baseline variables including age, tumor location, postoperative T-stage, postoperative N-stage (AJCC/UICC and JSED) were predictors of postoperative 5-year OS, whereas NSM was not. According to the Cox survival prediction model constructed above, if using both AJCC/UICC and JSED standards as two independent N staging variables, the prediction ability of AJCC/UICC standard (C-index=0.632) was better than that of JSED standard (C-index=0.620), and the combined predictive value was best (C-index=0.635). Conclusions：For the ESCC patients with postoperative staging TxN>0M0, NSM has no significant correlation with 5-year OS. In addition, the survival prediction model based on AJCC/UICC N staging is superior to that JSED N staging in predicting prognosis of patient with TxN>0M0 esophageal squamous cell carcinoma.