Clinical application and outcomes of sentinel node navigation surgery in patients with early gastric cancer

// Takaaki Arigami 1, 2, * , Yoshikazu Uenosono 2, * , Shigehiro Yanagita 1 , Keishi Okubo 1 , Takashi Kijima 1 , Daisuke Matsushita 1 , Masahiko Amatatsu 1 , Takahiko Hagihara 1 , Naoto Haraguchi 1 , Yuko Mataki 1 , Katsuhiko Ehi 1 , Sumiya Ishigami 1 and Shoji Natsugoe 1, 2 1 Department of Digestive Surgery, Breast and Thyroid Surgery, Kagoshima University Graduate School of Medical and Dental Sciences, Kagoshima, Japan 2 Molecular Frontier Surgery, Kagoshima University Graduate School of Medical and Dental Sciences, Kagoshima, Japan * These authors have contributed equally to this work Correspondence to: Takaaki Arigami, email: arigami@m.kufm.kagoshima-u.ac.jp Keywords: sentinel node navigation surgery, basin dissection, sentinel node mapping, outcomes, early gastric cancer Received: January 21, 2017      Accepted: April 11, 2017      Published: May 03, 2017 ABSTRACT Sentinel node navigation surgery (SNNS) has been recognized as a minimally invasive tool for individualized lymphadenectomy in patients with early gastric cancer (EGC). The aim of this study was to compare clinicopathological factors, adverse events, and clinical outcomes between sentinel node mapping (SNM) and SN dissection (SND) groups and assess the clinical utility of SNNS in patients with EGC. The clinical data of 157 patients with EGC, diagnosed as clinical T1N0M0 with tumors ≤ 40 mm, undergoing SNNS between March 2004 and April 2016 were retrospectively reviewed. Twenty-seven patients were excluded from the analysis. In the remaining 130 patients, 59 and 71 patients underwent standard lymphadenectomy for SNM and SND, respectively. The sentinel node detection rate in the SNM and SND groups was 98.3% (58/59) and 100% (71/71), respectively. Two (3.5%), 15 (25.9%), and 41 (70.7%) patients having sentinel nodes underwent total gastrectomy, proximal gastrectomy (PG), and distal gastrectomy (DG), respectively, in the SNM group. One (1.4%), 5 (7.0%), 10 (14.1%), 39 (54.9%), and 16 (22.5%) patients underwent PG, DG, segmental gastrectomy, local resection, and endoscopic submucosal dissection, respectively, in the SND group. There was no significant difference in postoperative complications between the SNM and SND groups ( P = 0.781). Survival did not differ between the both groups ( P = 0.856). The present results suggest that personalized surgery with SND provides technical safety and curability related with a favorable survival outcome in patients with EGC.