title: Gastroesophageal carcinoma: individualized surgical therapy.
abstract: During the twentieth century, surgical management of gastroesophageal carcinoma was developed by an establishment of standard procedures with lymph node dissection according to the metastatic distribution. The "fear" of invisible micrometastasis caused surgeons to perform more aggressive resection with lymphadenectomy to control the disease locally. Although several promising results of extensive lymph node dissection have been reported, the prognostic benefits of extensive surgery have not been proven by prospective randomized trials. A novel technology to detect micrometastasis without extensive surgical resection is required to gastroesophageal carcinoma. The lymphatic mapping technique is one of the attractive candidates for a novel tool to approach this issue.
authors.affiliation: Department of Surgery, Keio University School of Medicine, 35 Shinanomachi, Shinjuku-ku, Tokyo 160-8582, Japan. kitagawa@sc.itc.keio.ac.jp
authors.forename: Yuko
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Kitagawa
authors.forename: Masaki
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Kitajima
mesh_terms: D004938:Esophageal Neoplasms / Q000473:pathology / Q000601:surgery*; D005770:Gastrointestinal Neoplasms / Q000473:pathology / Q000601:surgery*; D006801:Humans; D008198:Lymph Nodes / Q000473:pathology*; D008207:Lymphatic Metastasis; D019060:Minimally Invasive Surgical Procedures / Q000379:methods*