[Excision of colorectal cancers: what can be expected of lymph node excision?]

We report a series of 413 patients with colo-rectal adenocarcinoma. 328 had a curative resection and 277 of them had elective lymphadenectomy; 51 had no lymphadenectomy because of either age or poor general status. Operative morbidity and mortality were not increased by lymphadenectomy. Survival was related to the lymph node involvement: 70.6% 5 year survival in patients without lymph node metastases, 49.3% 5 year survival in patients with lymph node metastases (P less than 0.001). However lymphadenectomy did not affect the survival rate of the patients. We conclude that lymphadenectomy had no deleterious effect. However, its real benefit on long term survival must be evaluated in further prospective randomised studies.