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Erschienen in:
01.09.2011 | Original Article
Factors affecting lymph node yield from patients undergoing colectomy for cancer
Erschienen in: International Journal of Colorectal Disease | Ausgabe 9/2011
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Purpose
Lymph node (LN) yield is a critical component of colon cancer staging and is often a surrogate for quality assessment in surgery. We investigated the impact of pathologists’ training on LN harvest.
Methods
This is a retrospective review on 137 patients undergoing elective colectomy for adenocarcinoma at a single institution from 2008 to 2009. We studied surgeon-, patient- and pathologist-derived factors, and identified independent variables affecting LN yield using logistic regression.
Results
LN yield was similar between open and laparoscopic resections (21 versus 23, p = 0.54). Similarly, nodal counts were independent of tumor location (p = 0.08) and no difference was noted between colorectal and general surgeons (24 versus 21, p = 0.31). Strikingly, the number of LNs reported by PGY-1 pathology residents was significantly higher than those with two or more years of training (24 versus 19, p = 0.02). On logistic regression, only the reporting pathologists’ year in training remained a significant predictor of the number of nodes reported (OR = 5.28, p = 0.0001).
Conclusions
LN retrieval in patients with colon cancer is inversely related to the interpreting pathologists’ level of training.