Immunohistochemical Study of Sentinel Lymph Node in Colon Cancer

Identification of sentinel lymph node (SLN) in colon cancer is very important in order to increase the accuracy of lymph node staging. The number of examined lymph nodes represents a significant predictor of survival. This study aims to show the importance of SLN histological and immunohistochemical examination in adjuvant oncological treatment. The study includes 23 patients with colon cancer (44% women and 56% men) who came in our clinic for surgical intervention. In all cases, the SLN was identified and prepared for histological examination. In 13 of the cases, micrometastases were found onhaematoxylin-eosin (HE) staining, there were 5 cases with positive immunohistochemistry using antibodies anti-p53, anti-VEGF-C, anti-CD34, and 5 cases with SLN negative both for HE and immunohistochemistry. Altogether we had a detection rate of 92%, an accuracy of 78,2%, a sensitivity of 90%, a false negative rate of 10% and a negative predictive value of 71,4%, good values according to the literature. Four (17,3%) patients had micrometastases exclusively in the sentinel lymph node, after performing additional histological examination, using multilevel section and immunohistochemistry. After assessing the SNL on our patients, we concluded that it is a reproducible practice for lymph node analysis.