PURPOSE: The development of sarcopenia after esophagectomy is reported to affect the outcomes of patients with esophageal cancer (EC); however, the characteristics of patients likely to be predisposed to postoperative sarcopenia have not been defined. This study explores the associations between preoperative respiratory function and surgery-induced sarcopenia in EC patients confirmed as nonsarcopenic preoperatively. METHODS: The subjects of this retrospective review were 128 nonsarcopenic patients who underwent esophagectomy for EC. We took body composition measurements and performed physical function tests 3 and 6 months postoperatively, to establish whether sarcopenia was present, according to the 2019 Asian Working Group for Sarcopenia guideline. We defined patients with surgery-induced sarcopenia as those with evidence of the development of sarcopenia within 6 months postoperatively or those with documented sarcopenia at 3 months but who could not be evaluated at 6 months. RESULTS: Surgery-induced sarcopenia developed in 19 of the 128 patients (14.8%), which correlated significantly with the preoperative %VC value (p < 0.01), but not with the preoperative FEV1.0% value. We set the lower quartile %VC value (91%) as the cut-off for predicting surgery-induced sarcopenia. A low %VC was independently associated with surgery-induced sarcopenia (odds ratio: 5.74; 95% confidence interval: 1.99-16.57; p < 0.01). CONCLUSIONS: Based on the findings of this study, %VC was a simple but valuable factor for predicting sarcopenia induced by esophagectomy.