Diagnosing ability of CT on periaortic lymph node metastasis of gastric cancer

One hundred and two resected cases of advanced gastric cancer were subjected to a study of investigating whether preoperative CT could identify the presence of periaortic lymph node metastasis of gastric cancer. According to our diagnosis criteria, the correct diagnosing rate was 88.2%, specificity was 97.4%, and sensitivity was 60.0%. These figures allowed to consider that the diagnosing ability of CT was high. However, false-negative cases amounted to 10, or 11.8%. When the false-negative cases were reviewed by macroscopic and histological types of primary lesions, no significant difference in macroscopic type was found, but an increasing tendency in false-negative results was observed in poorly differentiated type. From these findings preoperative CT was considered useful to know the presence of periaortic lymph node metastasis of gastric cancer. For probable false-negative result, our efforts to minimize it would mandatory by diagnosing based on histological type of the primary lesion. (author)