Objective The incidence of primaryad enocarcinoma of esophagus is much lower than the of squamous carcinoma in China. The aim of this study was to evaluate the clinical characteristics of primary ad enocarcinoma of esophagus.Methods All patients in this group un derwent esophagectomy.The clinicopathologic characteristics of twenty eight cases of primary adenocarcinoma of esophagus were retrospectively studied and compar ed with 1224 cases of squamous carcinoma who underwent operation in the same per iod.Included in this group were 1224 cases of squamous carcinoma,16 cases of ade nocarcinoma,10 cases of adenoacanthomas and adenosquamous carcinoma and 2 adenoid cystic carcinoma.Results The resectability was 100%,the opera tive mortality was 3.6%,the incidence of complication was 25.9%.The 1-,3-,5-year survival rates were 77.8%,48.1% and 29.6% respectively.Six of them survived over 10 years.According to international TNM staging system (1987),the 5-year survi vals of stage Ⅱ and stage Ⅲ~Ⅳ were 46.7% and 8.3% respectively while in 1224 cases of squamous carcinoma of esophagus underwent operation in the same period it was 44.4% and 10.35.There is no significant difference between them. Conclusion Primary adenocarcinoma of esophagus could get the same resul ts as that of squamous carcinoma of esophagus.The main factors that influence the curative effect were the depth of infiltration,the presence of lymph node metastasis,the TNM stage and the histological classification and degree of differenc tiation of tumor.