Role of complete lymphadenectomy in endometrioid uterine cancer

Although surgical pathological staging is the standard of care for uterine carcinoma, the benefits of a complete lymphadenectomy remain controversial. Evidence suggests that this procedure provides prognostic information and directs the use of appropriate adjuvant treatment in patients who are node-positive. Furthermore, it eliminates the need for adjuvant treatment in low-risk patients with negative nodes and no extrauterine spread of disease. Although the complications associated with this procedure raise the question as to whether all low-risk patients need a complete lymphadenectomy, the limitations of preoperative and intraoperative pathological analyses mean that lymphadenectomy in low-risk patients might still have merit. Future advances are warranted to enhance preoperative radiological and intraoperative pathological assessment to establish the risk of nodal disease. In this review, we assess the evidence on the prognostic and therapeutic benefits of a complete versus selective lymphadenectomy. Moreover, we discuss the complications associated with lymphadenectomy and identify subsets of low-risk patients who might not need to undergo this procedure.