Preoperative CT study of lymph nodes in cervical cancer--its correlation with histological findings

A study was conducted to retrospectively evaluate the accuracy of abdominopelvic computed tomography (CT) in the diagnosis of paraaortic and pelvic lymph node metastases from carcinoma of the uterine cervix. Seventy patients with a diagnosis of invasive carcinoma of the cervix had preoperative CT of abdomen and pelvis and subsequently underwent a radical hysterectomy with pelvic lymph node dissection and paraaortic lymph node biopsy or an exploratory laparotomy with paraaortic lymph node biopsy. Five of six patients with metastatic paraaortic lymph nodes larger than 15 mm in diameter on the histologic slides were diagnosed by CT scan to have enlarged nodes. CT diagnosis was true-positive in five of seven patients with paraaortic lymph node metastases (71.4%). Two patients with false-positive paraaortic lymph nodes had clusters of small lymph nodes less than 10 mm in diameter on the histologic slides. In contrast, only a small number of the metastatic pelvic nodes were diagnosed by CT as enlarged nodes. CT diagnosis was true-positive in 5 of 11 sites with pelvic lymph node metastases (45.5%).