For patients undergoing curative colon cancer surgery, the presence of positive lymph nodes predicts a greater risk of disease recurrence than negative lymph nodes. Numerous studies have reported that for patients with negative nodes, survival is worse when relatively few lymph nodes are evaluated.1 Most reports suggest this is due to understaging (ie, positive lymph nodes are missed as a result of poor surgical or pathological practices) and consequently patients are falsely identified as having negative nodes. These incorrectly staged patients have a survival risk commensurate with their true node-positive status; additionally, such patients are less likely to receive (and potentially benefit from) chemotherapy. In the hope of improving patient outcomes, several stakeholder groups have identified the evaluation of 12 or more lymph nodes following colon cancer resection as an indicator of the quality of practice provided by individual surgeons or pathologists, hospitals, or regions.2 Due to concerns of understaging, the American Society of Clinical Oncology even encourages the use of chemotherapy for patients with nonmetastatic node-negative tumors in the presence of low lymph node counts.3
Register and get free email Table of Contents alerts, saved searches, PowerPoint downloads, CME quizzes, and more
Subscribe for full-text access to content from 1998 forward and a host of useful features
Activate your current subscription (AMA members and current subscribers)
Purchase Online Access to this article for 24 hours
Country-Specific Mortality and Growth Failure in Infancy and Yound Children and Association With Material Stature
Use interactive graphics and maps to view and sort country-specific infant and early dhildhood mortality and growth failure data and their association with maternal
Instructions
Thank you for submitting a comment on this article. It will be reviewed by JAMA editors. You will be notified when your comment has been published. Comments should not exceed 500 words of text and 10 references.
Do not submit personal medical questions or information that could identify a specific patient, questions about a particular case, or general inquiries to an author. Only content that has not been published, posted, or submitted elsewhere should be submitted. By submitting this Comment, you and any coauthors transfer copyright to the journal if your Comment is posted.
* = Required Field
Disclosure of Any Conflicts of Interest* Indicate all relevant conflicts of interest of each author below, including all relevant financial interests, activities, and relationships within the past 3 years including, but not limited to, employment, affiliation, grants or funding, consultancies, honoraria or payment, speakers’ bureaus, stock ownership or options, expert testimony, royalties, donation of medical equipment, or patents planned, pending, or issued. If all authors have none, check "No potential conflicts or relevant financial interests" in the box below. Please also indicate any funding received in support of this work. The information will be posted with your response.
Some tools below are only available to our subscribers or users with an online account.
Download citation file:
Web of Science® Times Cited: 23
Customize your page view by dragging & repositioning the boxes below.
More Listings atJAMACareerCenter.com >
Users' Guides to the Medical Literature Clinical Resolution
Users' Guides to the Medical Literature Clinical Scenario
All results at JAMAevidence.com >
and access these and other features:
Register Now
Enter your username and email address. We'll send you a link to reset your password.
Enter your username and email address. We'll send instructions on how to reset your password to the email address we have on record.
Need assistance?
Athens and Shibboleth are access management services that provide single sign-on to protected resources. They replace the multiple user names and passwords necessary to access subscription-based content with a single user name and password that can be entered once per session. It operates independently of a user's location or IP address. If your institution uses Athens or Shibboleth authentication, please contact your site administrator to receive your user name and password.