Impact of Tumor Site on Lymph Node Status and Survival in Colon Cancer

Our objective was to explore the impact of tumor sites on lymph node (LN) status and prognosis in non-distant metastasis colon cancer after radical operation. Surveillance, epidemiology, and end results (SEER) database was used to identify 124, 836 early-stage colon cancer patients between 1988 and 2010, treated with radical surgery with a known tumor site. Seven tumor sites were defined as ascending, hepatic, cecum, transverse, descending, splenic, and sigmoid colons by the anatomical location. The associations of tumor site and LN status, including adequate (≥12) LN harvest and LN positivity, were examined with logistic regression, adjusting for multiple covariates. Relative survival was compared in a flexible parametric model. The quartile number of LN examined gradually decreased from ascending to sigmoid colon cancer (P