Sentinel node mapping for post-endoscopic resection gastric cancer: multicenter retrospective cohort study in Japan

BACKGROUND: Standard gastrectomy with systematic lymphadenectomy as an additional surgery after endoscopic resection (ER) causes a deterioration in long-term quality of life. If the sentinel lymph node (SN) basin concept can be applied in post-ER gastric cancer, minimal surgery can be applied without reducing the curability. This retrospective multicenter cohort study aimed to verify the validity of the SN basin concept in post-ER gastric cancer. PATIENTS AND METHODS: Individual data of 132 patients who underwent SN mapping after ER were collected from 8 university hospitals in Japan from 2001 to 2016. Tracers were injected endoscopically in the submucosal layer at four sites around the post-ER scar. We compared the SN basin distribution of post-ER gastric cancer with that of 275 patients with non-ER gastric cancer. RESULTS: Two cases of SN were unidentified, both involving a single tracer (SN detection rate: 98.5%). Nine cases (6.8%) of lymph node metastasis were found, of which eight had a metastatic lymph node within the SNs and one had a non-SN metastasis within the SN basin. The diagnostic sensitivity of SN mapping for lymph node metastasis was 88.9% in post-ER group and 95.7% in non-ER group (P = 0.490); the accuracy was 99.2% and 99.6% (P = 0.539), respectively. Regarding the SN basin, no significant intergroup differences were found regardless of the primary tumor location. CONCLUSIONS: Our findings clarified the feasibility of SN mapping based on the SN basin concept in patients with gastric cancer who previously underwent ER.