Endobronchial Ultrasound Improves Evaluation of Recurrent Laryngeal Nerve Lymph Nodes in Esophageal Squamous Cell Carcinoma Patients

The bilateral recurrent laryngeal nerve (RLN) lymph nodes are the most common metastatic site for esophageal squamous cell carcinoma (ESCC); however, the RLNs are susceptible to injury during dissection. Clinically, there is an urgent need to determine an effective diagnostic method for RLN nodes to help achieve selective nodal dissection and avoid potential serious complications by performing more conservative surgery for those with nonmetastatic nodes. Here, we innovatively applied endobronchial ultrasonography (EBUS) and investigated its diagnostic performance for preoperative evaluation of RLN nodes in ESCC patients. All 81 enrolled ESCC patients underwent preoperative EBUS and CT examinations. The ability of EBUS and CT to detect RLN node metastasis was evaluated based on the resulting sensitivity, specificity, accuracy, positive predictive value (PPV), and negative predictive value (NPV). The diagnostic performance of EBUS was superior to that of CT; in particular, EBUS of the left RLN (L-RLN) nodes presented the best sensitivity, specificity, PPV, NPV, and accuracy compared with EBUS evaluations of the right RLN (R-RLN) nodes, CT of the L-RLN and R-RLN nodes. Moreover, EBUS combined with CT increased the NPV relative to that of EBUS or CT alone, promoting the ability to identify true-negative RLN nodes. In particular, the NPVs of the combined modality were 100% for both the L- and R-RLN nodes in early-T-stage (T1–T2) ESCC. EBUS is an efficient tool for RLN node evaluation, and the combination with CT may provide better guidance for selective RLN node dissection in ESCC patients.