Sentinel Lymph Node Mapping Compared with Selective Lymph Node Sampling in the Surgical Staging of Endometrial...

Area of Science:

• Gynecologic Oncology
• Surgical Oncology
• Pathology

Background:

• Lymph node assessment is crucial for endometrial cancer surgical staging.
• Sentinel lymph node (SLN) mapping is increasingly used as an alternative to lymphadenectomy.

Purpose of the Study:

• To compare SLN mapping and selective lymph node sampling (SLNS) in endometrial cancer.
• To evaluate clinicopathological characteristics and the association between tumor stage and nodal involvement.

Main Methods:

• Prospective observational cohort study of 137 endometrial cancer patients.
• Surgical staging involved SLN mapping (indocyanine green or blue dye) or SLNS.
• Analysis of clinical, surgical, and histopathological data.

Main Results:

• SLNS yielded more lymph nodes (10) than SLN mapping (4).
• Overall nodal metastasis rate was 9.5% with no significant difference between techniques.
• Blue dye (BD) showed higher bilateral nodal detection rates (73.3%) than indocyanine green (ICG) (51.2%).
• Nodal involvement significantly increased with advanced pathological T stage (0% in T1a to 40.0% in T3a).

Conclusions:

• SLN mapping demonstrated comparable nodal metastasis detection rates to SLNS.
• Blue dye (BD) exhibited superior bilateral detection compared to ICG.
• Tumor stage remains a significant predictor of lymph node involvement in endometrial cancer.