Morgagni P, Saragoni L, Folli S, Gaudio M, Scarpi E, Bazzocchi F, Marra G A, Vio A
1' Department of General Surgery, Morgagni Hospital, Forlì, Italy.
Ann Surg Oncol. 2001 Mar;8(2):170-4. doi: 10.1007/s10434-001-0170-x.
Although lymph node metastases in patients with early gastric cancer (EGC) is an important prognostic factor, the prognostic relevance of lymph node micrometastases is still uncertain.
The authors studied 1488 lymph nodes, which were histologically confirmed as pN0, dissected from 139 patients who were treated for EGC between 1976-1994. Micrometastases were defined as a single or small cluster of neoplastic cells identifiable only by immunohistochemical methods.
Lymph node micrometastases was observed in 24 of the 139 patients (17%). No significant correlation was observed between micrometastases and other clinicopathological characteristics. Analysis of overall survival showed no significant difference between the micrometastases positive and negative groups.
The results of our study show that the presence of lymph node micrometastases in EGC does not have an influence on patient prognosis.
尽管早期胃癌（EGC）患者的淋巴结转移是一个重要的预后因素，但淋巴结微转移的预后相关性仍不确定。
作者研究了1976年至1994年间接受EGC治疗的139例患者的1488个经组织学证实为pN0的淋巴结。微转移定义为仅通过免疫组化方法可识别的单个或小簇肿瘤细胞。
139例患者中有24例（17%）观察到淋巴结微转移。微转移与其他临床病理特征之间未观察到显著相关性。总生存分析显示微转移阳性和阴性组之间无显著差异。
我们的研究结果表明，EGC中存在淋巴结微转移对患者预后没有影响。
