Relationship between lymph node sinuses with blood and lymphatic metastasis of gastric cancer

摘要

AIM: To elucidate the relationship between lymph nodesinuses with blood and lymphatic metastasis of gastric cancer.METHODS: Routine autopsy was carried out in the randomlyselected 102 patients (among them 100 patients died ofvarious diseases, and 2 patients died of non-diseasedreasons), their superficial lymph nodes locating in bilateralnecks (include supraclavicle), axilla, inguina, thorax, andabdomen were sampled. Haematoxylin-Eosin staining wasperformed on 10 % formalin-fixed and paraffin-embeddedlymph node tissue sections (Sum). The histological pattemsof the lymph sinuses containing blood were observed underlight microscope. The expression of CD31, a marker forendothelial cell, was detected both in blood and non-bloodcontaining lymph node sinuses with the method ofimmunohistochemistry.RESULTS: Among the 1322 lymph nodes sampled fromthe autopsies of 100 diseased cases, lymph node sinusescontaining blood were found in 809 lymph nodes sampledfrom 91 cases, but couldn't be seen in the lymph nodessampled from the non-diseased cases. According to histology,we divided the blood containing lymph node sinuses intofive categories: vascular-opening sinus, blood-deficient sinus,erythrophago-sinus, blood-abundant sinus, vascular-formative sinus. Immunohistochemical findings showed thatthe expression of CD31 was strongly positive in vascular-formative sinuses and some vascular-opening sinuses whileit was faint in blood-deficient sinuses, erythrophago-sinusesand some vascular-opening sinuses. It was almost negativein blood-abundant sinus and non-blood containing sinus.CONCLUSION: In the state of disease, the phenomenonof blood present in the lymph sinus is not uncommon. Bloodcould possibly enter into the lymph sinuses through thelymphaticovenous communications between the veins andthe sinuses in the node. Lymph circulation and the bloodcirculation could communicate with each other in the lymphnode sinuses. The skipping and distal lymphatic metastasisof gastric cancer may have some connection with the bloodcontaining lymph node sinuses.