[Clinical application of sentinel node navigation surgery for esophageal cancer]

In esophageal cancer, sentinel nodes (SNs) are identified as multiple nodes and widely spread from cervical to abdominal areas. In more than 80% of the cases, at least one SN is located in the 2nd or 3rd compartment of regional lymph nodes which have been considered to be "skip metastases". This characteristic distribution of SNs is attributed to the multi-directional lymphatic drainage routes from the esophagus. Clinical application of SN navigation surgery will be expected to play a key role for intraoperative diagnosis for lymph node metastasis and individualized multimodal therapy in patients with cT1N0 esophageal cancer.