[Surgical lymph-node evaluation in cervical cancer].

Lymph-nodal involvement is a major prognostic factor of cervical cancer. Lymph-node status is classically evaluated by lymph-node dissection. This surgical approach has mainly a prognostic interest. The morbidity related to the lymph-node dissection is not nil, so numerous imaging or surgical techniques have been recently developed in order to reduce this morbidity. Currently, even with the progress of the imaging techniques, surgical lymph-node dissection is the standard approach. For the management of early cervical cancer, surgery is usually the sole treatment. In association with a laparoscopic lymph-node dissection, the sentinel node technique is a new approach that gives interesting data: possibility of performing frozen sections on the sentinel nodes in order to improve the management, discovery in an important proportion of cases of abnormal lymphatic pathways that are a potential aetiology of recurrence, and identification of lymph-node micrometastases that seem to be an important independent prognostic factor. In the future, evaluation of only the sentinel nodes may replace the pelvic lymph-node dissection. For advanced cervical cancers, the treatment is based on chemoradiotherapy. The paraaortic lymph-node status is an important prognostic factor that helps for defining the radiotherapy fields. New imaging techniques as PET Scan, may help for the evaluation of paraaortic lymph-node status. If the PET Scan is positive at the paraaortic level, there is no need for paraaortic lymph-node dissection and radiotherapy should be performed with pelvic and abdominal fields. But the false negative rate of the PET Scan is high and laparoscopic paraaortic lymph-node dissection is required in case of negative PET Scan at the paraaortic level.