Review
Copyright ©The Author(s) 2015. Published by Baishideng Publishing Group Inc. All rights reserved.
World J Gastrointest Surg. Jan 27, 2015; 7(1): 1-9
Published online Jan 27, 2015. doi: 10.4240/wjgs.v7.i1.1
Sentinel node navigation surgery for gastric cancer: Overview and perspective
Masakazu Yashiro, Tasuku Matsuoka
Masakazu Yashiro, Tasuku Matsuoka, Department of Surgical Oncology, Osaka City University Graduate School of Medicine, Osaka 545-8585, Japan
Masakazu Yashiro, Oncology Institute of Geriatrics and Medical Science, Osaka City University Graduate School of Medicine, Osaka 545-8585, Japan
Author contributions: Yashiro M and Matsuoka T designed this review; Yashiro M wrote and edited the manuscript.
Supported by Partially funded by KAKENHI (Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research), No. 23390329; by the National Cancer Center Research and Development Fund (23-A-9); and by Priority Research Fund of Osaka City University.
Conflict-of-interest: There are not any financial or other interests with regard to the submitted manuscript that might be construed as a conflict of interest.
Open-Access: This article is an open-access article which was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Correspondence to: Masakazu Yashiro, MD, Department of Surgical Oncology, Osaka City University Graduate School of Medicine, 1-4-3 Asahi-machi, Abeno-ku, Osaka 545-8585, Japan. m9312510@med.osaka-cu.ac.jp
Telephone: +81-6-66453838 Fax: +81-6-66466450
Received: October 3, 2014
Peer-review started: October 3, 2014
First decision: November 19, 2014
Revised: December 3, 2014
Accepted: December 29, 2014
Article in press: January 4, 2015
Published online: January 27, 2015
Processing time: 109 Days and 6 Hours
Core Tip

Core tip: The sentinel node (SN) technique has been established for the treatment of some types of malignancies to avoid over invasive surgery. However, SN navigation surgery in gastric cancer has not been yet universal due to the complicated lymphatic flow from the stomach. The results reported in the literature on SN biopsy in gastric cancer are widely divergent and many issues are still to be resolved, such as the collection method of SN, the accuracy of SN mapping, detection of micrometastasis in SN, and clinical benefit. SN mapping should be promising tool for indicating minimally invasive surgery of gastric cancer.