Sentinel lymph node in esophageal cancer before neoadjuvant therapy

The technique of sentinel lymph node identification and biopsy has become a new popular technique for surgeon to improve staging of malignant diseases. It may also reduce the risk of complication related to standard lymphadenectomy. The method is still in experimental phase in case of esophageal cancer. A possible complication for employment of the method in this tumor is neoadjuvant therapy. The authors developed the technique for identifying and obtaining the sentinel lymph node in esophageal cancer using minimally invasive surgical technique before neoadjuvant therapy. The sentinel lymph node is detected using 99mTc-labelled nanocolloid. The authors report and discuss possible difficulties of the method in the case of a patient with detected sentinel lymph node in this way.

It is possible to identify and obtain a sentinel lymph node before neoadjuvant therapy in esophageal cancer. On the other hand, the clinical significance and applicability of the method of sentinel lymph node still remains controversial in this kind of a tumor.