Recently, the idea has been proposed to separate right and left-s

Recently, the idea has been proposed to separate right and left-sided tumors into distinct entities based upon some of the observed differences described above (17,19). Total numbers of retrieved lymph nodes also has shifted over the last two decades. Many sellekchem studies have noted that compared to a number of years ago, the average number of lymph nodes harvested per specimen has increased. This is likely due to increased awareness of the importance of the lymphadenectomy and proper staging. However, although this number is trending upwards (11,13,27,28), the majority of populations and institutions studied are not meeting Inhibitors,research,lifescience,medical current recommendations of 12 or more lymph nodes.

In a population Inhibitors,research,lifescience,medical study performed in Canada, Baxter et al. found that only 37% of colorectal carcinoma patients were achieving this number (29). Likewise, Lagoudianakis et al. showed 41.6% compliance (30), while

Bilimoria et al. showed greater than 60% of institutions did not meet the recommended 12 lymph node benchmark (31). A number of factors have been associated with increased number of lymph nodes retrieved in resection specimens for Inhibitors,research,lifescience,medical colorectal carcinoma, including length of resected bowel segment, patient age, and tumor location (28,30,32). In addition, the prognostic capability of the more simplistic staging systems, such as American Joint Committee on Cancer (AJCC) staging system, recently has been questioned. Although attempting to further delineate prognostic groups, the creation of additional sub-stages in the AJCC seventh edition has Inhibitors,research,lifescience,medical led to what Weiser et al. considers “loss of the clear rank ordering which is the hallmark of categorical staging systems” (33). In their study, they created nomograms which incorporate number of nodes retrieved, number of positive nodes, age of patient, and tumor grade in addition to the T stage. These nomograms are felt to be better predictors of patient prognosis than the traditional TNM stage system, but are more complex to use (34).

While the focus Inhibitors,research,lifescience,medical traditionally has been on the effects the number of lymph nodes retrieved have on the prognosis Cilengitide of patients with colorectal carcinoma, current recommendations take a more pre-emptive approach. Prevention of invasive carcinoma and, if present, the detection of early stage cancers, through the use of a number of tests, either singly or in combination are expected to yield profound survival improvement (30). Gordon (35) summarizes that scientific study screening for CRC is justified because: it is a common and serious disease, various screening tests achieve accurate detection of early-stage disease, evidence shows that removing adenomatous polyps and detecting early stage disease will reduce mortality from disease, and benefits of screening outweigh its harms.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

*

You may use these HTML tags and attributes: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <strike> <strong>