Node dissection in gastric cancer.

Three hundred patients who underwent absolute and relative curative gastrectomy and lymph node dissection for gastric cancer were reviewed with respect to postoperative mortality; proportion of patients with node involvement according to the extent of dissection; number of metastatic nodes dissected according to the extent of dissection; accuracy of macroscopic evaluation of node involvement and microscopic node involvement according to tumour location. If more nodes were dissected the proportion of patients with node involvement and the total number of metastatic nodes increased; conversely within R0 and R3 the extent of dissection did not affect postoperative survival. Finally when the presence and extent of node involvement was only macroscopically evaluated, the patients were classified incorrectly in 9.5 per cent of the N0 group and 20.2 per cent of the N1 group. The data suggest that lymph node dissection may be useful in the treatment of gastric cancer, and within the extent studied the employment of this procedure does not affect the postoperative mortality.