Objective: To analyze the correlation of lymph node metastasis with clinicopathological parameters and outcomes of colorectal adenocarcinoma, and to explore its clinicopathological significance.
Methods: The lymph node metastasis and clinicopathological features of 133 colorectal adenocarcinoma patients whose specimens were interpreted in Department of Pathology of Beijing Tongren Hospital between February 2011 and August 2015 were retrospectively analyzed. The relationship between the lymph node metastasis and clinicopathological features as well as outcomes was also analyzed according to the follow-up data of these patients.
Results: Among the 133 cases, 69 had lymph node metastasis, and the other 64 had no lymph node metastasis. Compared with the non-lymph node metastasis group, the lymph node metastasis group had higher prevalence of neural invasion (20.29% vs 3.13%) and vascular invasion (36.23% vs 3.13%), deeper tumor invasion (beyond the serosa: 1.45% vs 0), lower tumor differentiation (poorly differentiated: 26.09% vs 14.06%), higher mortality (11.59% vs 1.56%) and distant metastasis (17.39% vs 4.69%) (all P<0.05). In the lymph node metastasis group, intra-group comparison among patients of different lymph node N staging (N0, N1a, N1b, N2a, N2b) also showed statistically significant differences in neural invasion, vascular invasion, circumferential resection margin, maximum diameter of the tumor, depth of tumor invasion, tumor differentiation, survival, and distant metastasis (all P<0.05). There were no statistically significant differences between the patients with lymph node metastases <12 and those with lymph node metastases ≥12 in these clinicopathological parameters(all P>0.05).
Conclusions: Presence/absence of lymph node metastasis and lymph node stage may be correlated with neural invasion, vascular invasion, depth of tumor invasion, tumor differentiation, survival, and distant metastasis. However, no marked relationship was detected of the number of lymph node metastases (<12 or ≥12) with clinicopathological parameters and outcomes.