[Diagnosis of lymphatic metastases in intraoperative thoracic cytology]

The diagnosis of metastases to lymph nodes of the thoracic or neck region reveals great importance for the thoracic surgery. In the last two years we investigated materials taken from 730 patients undergoing thoracotomies, mediastinoscopies and by exstirpations of lymph nodes. Altogether there were imprints from 1400 lymph nodes cytologically screened. Different tumor types exhibited different numbers of metastases. Usually we took smears from 2 till 12 lymph nodes from one patient. We got the imprints from several planes of the lymph node. All imprints were stained by Giemsa fast staining. The results of this cytological method are not inferior to the histological section technique.