Lymphnode Metastasis of the Esophageal Cancer: Comparative Study on the Diagnosis between Gross Findings and Histopathology

The difference between macroscopic and microscopic diagnoses of the lymph nodes of 46 patients with esophageal squamous cell carcinoma was assessed. The results obtained can be summarized as follows: (1) The accuracy of macroscopic diagnosis of lymph node metastasis of well, moderately, and poorly-differentiated sequmous cell carcinoma were 95.3%, 91.5% and 83.2%. That of poorly differentiated one was significantly lower than those of well or moderately one.(2) The specificity of macroscopic diagnosis was lower in lymph nodes in which the metastatic mode was micrometasis and in nodes whose diameter was less than 5 mm. The incidence of such lymph nodes was higher in cases of poorly differentiated squamous cell carcinoma.(3) Microscopically, all false positive lymph nodes were diagnosed as reactive lymphadenitis. The majority of of these lymph nodes were larger than 10 mm in diameter.