Twelve years of experience with percutaneous, paravascular biopsy of pelvic lymph nodes

Twelve years of experience with paravascular percutaneous biopsy of iliac lymph nodes is described. The technique has been performed in 150 patients with equivocal lymphographic diagnoses or with clinical symptoms of malignant disease without peripheral lymphadenopathy. The method is simple and has few complications. No diagnosis has proved to be falsee positive, while in eight per cent of the cases fals negative diagnoses were found. In nine per cent of the patients the results were unacceptable for technical reasons. The method is useful only for biopsy of external iliac lymph nodes. A further study has been initiated to compare the results of the paravascular and the transperitoneal biopsy techniques.