Intranodal Mapping Using Carbon Dye Results in More Accurate Lymph Node Staging in Colon Cancer Patients

Introduction Small nodal tumor infiltrates (SNTI)—defined as isolated tumor cells and micrometastases—are associated with worse disease-free and overall survival in stage I and II colon cancer patients. Their detection, however, remains challenging. The objective of the present study was to evaluate whether there is a correlation between the location of SNTI and phagocytosed carbon dye particles in sentinel lymph nodes (SLN) of colon cancer patients.