[Relationship between the size and metastasis of hepatic lymph nodes in patients with synchronous liver metastasis of colorectal cancer]

This retrospective study was performed to examine the relationship between the size and metastasis of hepatic lymph node in patients with liver metastasis of colorectal cancer.We analyzed a total of 163 hepatic lymph nodes that were removed during surgery from 55 patients with synchronous liver metastasis of colorectal cancer, who underwent resection of primary tumor without any residual lesions except for liver metastasi (e) s. The relationship between the size and metastasis was examined on paraffin-embedded specimens.The maximal and minimal diameters were significantly greater in positive lymph nodes (n=35) than in negative lymph nodes (n=128). The area under the curve of receiver operating curve for predicting metastasis by size was 0.69. The sensitivity, specificity, and accuracy were 62.9%, 60.9%, and 61.4%, respectively, when the cutoff value was set at 7 mm.These findings suggest that selecting patients with hepatic lymph node metastasis based on the size of lymph nodes would be difficult.