Gastric cancer is one of the most common malignancies and a leading cause of cancer death. Complete resection is still the only treatment to offer a cure for patients with gastric cancer. Lymphadenectomy is the most important part of curative resection, but lymphadenectomy is also very difficult in gastric cancer surgery. The aim of this study was to report our 3-step method for lymphadenectomy and clarify its safety and value in gastric cancer.

A total of 120 consecutive patients underwent our 3-step method for lymphadenectomy at the Second Affiliated Hospital Zhejiang University College of Medicine between February 2006 and July 2007. The main surgical procedure was performed from right to left and from caudal to cranial. Clinical factors, surgical variables, postoperative morbidity, and hospital (30-day) mortality were analyzed retrospectively.

Total gastrectomy was performed in 41 patients; combined adjacent organ resection was performed in 9 patients. The mean operation time was 201.8 minutes, and the mean blood loss was 376.7 mL. The median postoperative hospital stay was 14.9 ± 4.3 days. A total of 3,569 lymph nodes (LNs) were removed and examined, and 2,879 were negative. More than 15 LNs were examined in all 120 patients. The median number of examined LNs was 29 (range 17 to 64; mean 29.7 ± SD 9.6) per patient, and the median number of positive LNs was 5 (range 0 to 37; mean 5.8 ± SD 7.1) per patient. The overall incidence of postoperative complications was 10.8%, and the rate of hospital death was 0%. The median follow-up period for those patients was 34.3 months (range 10 to 53 months), and the overall 3-year survival rate was 40.6%.

The 3-step method for lymphadenectomy is easy to perform and is a safe and useful procedure for gastric cancer surgery.