In spite of it's decreasing incidence in the last years, gastric cancer remains the most frequent cause of death by malignant. Prognosis depends on gastric wall tumor invasion, lymph node involvement and distant metastasis. Small lymph nodes (less than 1 mm) are rarely identified, and, disease status and prognosis could change if some are metastatic. To identify lymph nodes in gastrectomy and lymphadenectomy specimens from gastric cancer, we have used a lymph node revealing solution (LNRS) after having taken the visible and palpable lympg nodes off. We have found 222 nodes with this technique (17.1 per patient) and more 123 nodes with LNRS (9.5 per patient), 55.5% additional nodes. Biopsies have shown 39 metastatic nodes revealed by the traditional method and eight with LNRS. Statistics showed that LNRS was effective in lymph nodes detection. LNRS revealed nodes were smaller. Disease status did not change after addiction of LNRS detected nodes. We concluded LNRS was effective in lymph nodes searching from the studied specimens.
Gastric cancer; Lymph nodes; Lymph nodes revealing solution; Gastrectomy
