ArticleBMC surgery2018
Lymph node ratio is inferior to pN-stage in predicting outcome in colon cancer patients with high numbers of analyzed lymph nodes.
Article in BMC surgery, 2018. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 17 papers.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
17 citing papers in PubMed.
- Development of a prognostic model based on positive lymph node ratio for yp stage III colorectal cancer.Updates in surgery · 2026Article
- Prognostic and Predictive Value of Lymph Node Ratio in Stage III Colon Cancer in the Era of Molecular Biomarkers.Journal of the anus, rectum and colon · 2026Article
- Article
- Prognostic and predictive value of tumor infiltration proportion within lymph nodes in N1 colorectal cancer.Frontiers in oncology · 2025Article
- Prognostic value of metastatic lymph node ratio and its effect on disease-free survival in colon cancer.Frontiers in oncology · 2025Article
- Analysis of the predictive postoperative recurrence performance of three lymph node staging systems in patients with colon cancer.Frontiers in oncology · 2025Article
- Lymph node ratio is a more robust predictor of overall survival than N stage in stage III colorectal adenocarcinoma.Diagnostic pathology · 2024Review
- Article
- Assessing the clinical utility of tumor invasion proportion of lymph nodes for enhanced risk stratification in N1 colorectal cancer.American journal of cancer research · 2024Article
- A Prediction Model for Tumor Recurrence in Stage II-III Colorectal Cancer Patients: From a Machine Learning Model to Genomic Profiling.Biomedicines · 2022Article
- Construction of a new clinical staging system for colorectal cancer based on the lymph node ratio: A validation study.Frontiers in surgery · 2022Article
- Beyond N staging in colorectal cancer: Current approaches and future perspectives.Frontiers in oncology · 2022Review
- The Prognostic Significance of Lymph Node Status and Lymph Node Ratio (LNR) on Survival of Right Colon Cancer Patients: a Tertiary Center Experience.Journal of gastrointestinal cancer · 2021Article
- Is there a relationship between length of resection and lymph-node ratio in colorectal cancer?Gastroenterology report · 2021Article
- Evaluation of prognostic factors and clinicopathological patterns of recurrence after curative surgery for colorectal cancer.World journal of gastrointestinal surgery · 2021Article
- Clinical Implications of Lymph Node Metastasis in Colorectal Cancer: Current Status and Future Perspectives.Annals of coloproctology · 2019Review
- The association between the lymph node ratio, surgical margin, and survival in patients with colon cancer receiving adjuvant chemotherapy.Pakistan journal of medical sciencesArticle
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
6 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
backgroundThe lymph node ratio (LNR), i.e. the number of positive lymph nodes (LN) divided by the total number of analyzed LN, has been described as a strong outcome predictor in node-positive colon cancer patients. However, most published analyses are constrained by relatively low numbers of analyzed LN. Therefore, the objective of the present study was to evaluate the prognostic impact of LNR in colon cancer patients with high numbers of analyzed LN.
methodsOne hundred sixty-six colon cancer patients underwent open colon resection. All node-positive patients were analyzed for this study. The number of analyzed LN, of positive LN, the disease-free (DFS) and overall survival (OS) time were prospectively recorded. Patients were dichotomously allocated to a high or a low LNR-group, respectively, with the median LNR (0.125) as a cut-off value. Median follow-up was 34.3 months.
resultsFifty-eight patients (34.9%) were node-positive. The median number of analyzed LN was 23 (range 8-54). DFS and OS were significantly shorter in pN2 vs pN1 patients (p < 0.001, and p = 0.001, respectively), and in LNR high vs low patients (p = 0.032, and p = 0.034, respectively). pN2 (vs pN1) disease showed hazard ratios (HR) of 6.2 (p < 0.001), and 6.8 (p < 0.005; for DFS and OS, respectively), while LNR high (vs low) showed HR of 3.0 (p =0.041), and 4.5 (p = 0.054).
conclusionsLNR is a reasonable outcome predictor in node-positive colon cancer patients. However, LNR is inferior to pN-stage in predicting survival in patients with high number of harvested lymph nodes.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.