Intraoperative ultrasonography for the identification of thoracic recurrent laryngeal nerve lymph nodes in patients with esophageal cancer

The rate of vocal cord palsy following resection for esophageal carcinoma has increased due to lymphadenectomy around the recurrent laryngeal nerves (RLN). The aim of this pilot study was to assess the ability of intraoperative ultrasonography to detect thoracic RLN node metastases in patients with esophageal cancer. Intraoperative ultrasonography was performed during esophagectomy to assess whether RLN lymph nodes were metastatic in 10 patients with esophageal squamous cell cancer. All patients underwent RLN lymphadenectomy, and the nodes were assessed for metastasis. Three patients had pathological RLN lymph node metastases, of which one had right RLN node metastasis, and three had left RLN node metastases. For detecting right RLN lymph node metastasis, the sensitivity, specificity, and positive and negative predictive values of intraoperative ultrasonography were 100%, 33.3%, 14.3%, and 100%, respectively. For the detection of left RLN lymph node, these values were 100%, 85.7%, 75%, and 100%, respectively. This study suggests that intraoperative ultrasonography is feasible and safe to detect RLN lymph node metastases for patients with esophageal cancer. Further study will be performed to evaluate the validity and utility of this diagnostic technique.