[Detection of hepatic lymph node involvement by PET/CT in colorectal cancer patients with liver metastasis]

We investigated the clinical significance of hepatic lymph node (HN) metastasis in 50 patients with colorectal cancer metastases to the liver. Patients underwent preoperative positron emission tomography/computed tomography (PET/CT), and subsequently, resection of colorectal liver metastases with HN dissection from 2007 to 2013. In the present study, we evaluated whether PET/CT screening would be beneficial in diagnosing the HN metastases. Our results indicate that 2 histo- logically confirmed HN metastases were detected during preoperative PET/CT screening for 50 patients, of which only 1 patient received a positive diagnosis prior to surgery. The sensitivity, specificity, positive predictive value, negative predictive value, and accuracy of predicting metastasis were 50%, 100%, 100%, 98%, and 98%, respectively. We conclude that PET/ CT screening is not feasible for detecting HN metastasis.