English

Abstract

BACKGROUND: Lymph node status is important in staging a colon cancer, the difference between stage I and stage II disease relies on T category and this variable literally represent the number of lymph nodes harvested. Differentiation of stage II & stage III lymph node status is very important & more lymph nodes you find, the better the chances of identifying a positive node and that patient will be correctly staged as stage III. METHODS: A prospective study of 30 patients with stage II & stage III Colon cancer patient, who underwent curative resection, having 12 or more lymph nodes harvested from the specimen, were prospectively followed up and analyzed for 5 years. The kaplan-Meier method was performed by Cox proportional hazards ratio model with right censored Colon cancer survival data at a 10% significance level. RESULTS: In our study LNP (Number of positive lymph nodes), & LNR (Ratio of positive lymph nodes), predict the overall survival in the patient of all stages. Whereas for the patient of stage II LNT (Total number of lymph nodes) (p<.261) had shown to have effect on overall survival. In the patient of stage III, LNR (Ratio of positive lymph nodes), (0.003) & LNP (Number of positive lymph nodes), (.012) were the most prognostic factors but correlation analyses indicated that LNR (Ratio of positive lymph nodes) had the best discriminating capability to predict 5- year survival. CONCLUSION: The primary end point of the study was 5-year survival, including overall, disease-free and disease-specific survival. Lymph node involvement is the key factor that determines the stage and prognosis for Colon cancer. Our results demonstrate that LNT (Total number of lymph nodes) is only prognostic for patients with stage II diseases and that LNR (Ratio of positive lymph nodes), LODDS (Log odds of positive lymph nodes), and LNP (Number of positive lymph nodes), are prognostic factors for patients with stage III diseases.