['This study was designed to determine the expression of metastasis associated lung adenocarcinoma transcript 1 (MALAT1) in patients with esophageal cancer (EC). In addition, we attempted to seek the prognostic value of MALAT1 in EC based on its expression.', 'The expression of MALAT1 in EC tissues and cell lines were measured by quantitative real-time reverse transcriptase-polymerase chain reaction (qRT-PCR). The association between MALAT1 expression and the clinical characteristics was analyzed using Chi-square test. Kaplan-Meier survival curves were plotted to describe the overall survival of EC patients with different expression of MALAT1. Cox regression analysis was per formed to evaluate the prognostic value of MALAT1 for EC patients.', 'Expression levels of MALAT1 were significantly higher in EC tissues and cells than the controls (P<0.05). MALAT1 expression was tightly related to lymphatic invasion (P=0.018), distant metastasis (P=0.033) and tumor differentiation (P=0.025), but shared no association with age, gender and tumor location (P>0.05). In addition, patients with high MALAT1 expression had a shorter overall survival than those with low MALAT1 (P<0.001). The results of Cox analysis shown that MALAT1 was significantly linked with the prognosis of EC patients (HR=6.638; P=0.000; 95% CI=2.948-14.947).'] Does increased MALAT1 expression predict poor prognosis in esophageal cancer patients?