The impact of methylene blue in colorectal cancer: Systematic review and meta-analysis study

In patients with colorectal cancer (CRC), the most important factor to decide the need of adjuvant chemotherapy is the histological lymph node (LN) evaluation. Our work aimed to give a broad view over the use of methylene blue and its consequences in the number of lymph node harvest.

PUBMED, WEB OF SCIENCE and EMBASE databases were consulted, retrieving clinical trials, which mentioned the used of intra-arterial methylene blue in patients with colorectal cancer.

Eighteen clinical trials analyzing the use of intra-arterial methylene blue in specimens of colorectal cancer were selected. The articles show a statistical difference between the use of methylene blue and the classical dissection in both variable at study. The results of the statistical analysis of the lymph node harvest variable demonstrate a significant statistical difference between the group that received methylene blue injection and the group that underwent conventional dissection. There is a significant statistical difference between the experimental and control groups for the ideal lymph node harvest (lymph node harvest count greater than 12).

The use of intra-arterial methylene blue revealed a high potential for the quantification of lymph nodes, considering the increase of lymph node harvest and the higher percentage of cases with more than 12 lymph nodes count, albeit the high heterogeneity between the studies in terms of reported results. Future investigations with controlled double blinded studies obtaining better categorized results should be conducted in order to better evaluate this technique and compare it to the current paradigm.