LAUSR

Since lymphatic metastasis is very common in patients with small bowel (jejunoileal) neuroendocrine tumors (SBNETs), treatment with lymphadenectomy is recommended by guidelines whenever it is available. However, what is less well known is how to assess the prognostic value of lymphatic metastasis in SBNETs. In addition, the current classifications of lymphatic metastasis were controversial. Specifically speaking, a retrospective study found that the prognosis of patients with stage III disease (including patients with lymphatic metastasis) was not worse than that of patients with stage I/II disease, which indicated that simply classifying lymphatic metastasis into N0 and N1, as proposed by the European Neuroendocrine Tumor Society (ENETS), may be questionable. The newly updated American Joint Committee on Cancer (AJCC) staging classification proposed a different classification for lymph nodes according to the number of positive lymph nodes; however, the prognostic validity of this novel classification has not yet been studied. PRESENT