Colonoscopic Tattooing May Improve Lymph Node Detection and Mapping

Colonoscopic tattooing is now commonly performed to mark colorectal cancer (CRC) and endoscopically unresectable polyps for laparoscopic or open surgical resection. Now, investigators evaluate whether colonic tattooing with carbon black could also mark lymph nodes and thus increase their detectability during surgical resection.

In a retrospective study, researchers assessed lymph node detection in 95 patients who underwent colonic tattooing before resection for invasive CRC and 210 controls who did not undergo tattooing before resection in two hospitals in the Netherlands. Researchers also examined the sensitivity of endoscopic tattooing for sentinel node mapping.

Of the 95 patients who underwent tattooing, the median yield of lymph nodes was…