Current status of intraoperative lymph node dissection for hilar cholangiocarcinoma

Abstract

Lymphatic metastasis is an independent prognostic factor for surgical prognosis of patients with hilar cholangiocarcinoma (HCCA) . Lymph node dissection is an important content of radical resection of HCCA, but there are still many disputes about the definition, scope and dissection numbers of intraoperative lymph node dissection. There has been a lot of research being done at home and abroad in recent years focusing on the above problems, and novel insights have also been proposed.According to the current view, routine skeletal dissection of lymph nodes in the duodenum ligament of liver, the common hepatic artery, and the posterior part of the duodenum of pancreas head (the 12(th) group, the 8(th) group and the 13(th) group) during operation can bring significant survival benefits to patients with HCCA. However, it is still not clear whether the dissection of peripheral lymph node in truncus coeliacus, aorta abdominalis, and venae cava inferior during operation can bring survival benefits to HCCA patients during operation. Properly increasing the number of lymph node dissection during operation can not only significantly improve the survival prognosis of the patients of HCCA with stage N0, but also improve the detection rate of positive lymph nodes and obtain enough information for the stage of the disease. However, the excessive increase of total lymph node count is not only difficult to achieve in practice, but may also lead to an increase in the incidence of postoperative complications. Therefore, further investigation is needed in intraoperative lymph node dissection of HCCA.