Objectives: Comprehensive surgical staging in low risk endometrial cancer has been controversial for many years. Lymph node status was predictable disease progression and staging. Also, it was helpful clinicians make the decision to adjuvant therapy. Currently, complete lymphadenectomy is not recommended for low risk endometrial cancer. Because, no evidence that lymphadenectomy decreases the risk of death or disease recurrence compared with no lymphadenectomy in low risk endometrial cancer. However, many gyneco-oncologists are not convinced that low risk endometrial cancer does not require lymph node dissection. This study was designed to evaluate the detection rate and sensitivity of sentinel lymph node compared with the complete lymphadenectomy in low risk endometrial cancer.
Methods: This retrospective study uses data from Asan medical center with endometrial cancer who underwent surgical staging, between October 2015 to December 2019. The inclusion criteria were low-risk endometrial cancer according to the ESMO guidelines (Endometorid histology, Grade 1-2, less than half involvement myometrium). All patients presumed preoperative stage IA disease defined as preoperative abdomen/pelvis and chest imaging. Before starting surgery and under general anesthesia, indocyanin green was injected in the cervix at 3 and 9 o'clock. The sentinel lymph node were identified, resected, and complete bilateral pelvic lymphadenectomy was performed in all patients.
Results: 170 patients were included in this study. Intraoperative detection rate of at least one sentinel lymph node biopsy was 100 %. Seven patients (4.1%) had metastatic disease in regional lymph nodes. Of those 7 patients, 6 had at least one sentinel lymph node detected in the same hemi-pelvis as the metastatic node. One patient had a negative sentinel lymph node detected in the left hemi-pelvis but ultimately was found to have microscopic metastatic disease to a lymph node in the right hemi-pelvis that did not mapping. Calculated on a per patient basis, the accuracy of sentinel lymph node biopsy was 99.4%, the sensitivity was 85.7% (95% CI), the specificity was 100% (95% CI), the positive predictive value was 100% (95% CI), the negative predictive value was 99.4% (95% CI) and the false negative rate was 14.3%.
Conclusions: The role of lymph node dissection in the surgical staging of low risk endometrial cancer remains controversial. Some studies suggest that it is important to assess nodal status even in patients with low risk group. Patients with low-risk endometrial cancer have been reported to have an approximately 5% risk of lymph node metastasis. In our study, the lymph node metastasis rate (4.7%) was similar to other studies. This is usually a low-risk group for nodal metastasis; however, missing lymph node metastasis in these select cases will likely have a detrimental oncologic outcome. According to our study, lymph node metastasis can be clearly identified through sentinel lymph node biopsy in patients which was not detected lymph node metastasis on MRI/CT. Our study result demonstrates the accuracy of the sentinel lymph node biopsy and its reasonable PPV and NPV. Sentinel lymph node biopsy is a valid alternative strategy to replace complete lymph node resection in low risk endometrial cancer.