An evaluation of pelvic lymphoscintigraphy in the staging of colorectal carcinoma.

Lymphoscintigraphy was used to delineate the lymphatic drainage of the rectum and distal colon in 18 patients with carcinoma of the rectum or sigmoid colon, in four with inflammatory disease of the large bowel and in 20 controls without colorectal pathology. Abdominal imaging was performed after submucosal injection of either 4 mCi 99mTc-antimony sulphide colloid or 0.5 mCi 99mTc-dextran into the rectum through a proctoscope. In nine patients with colorectal carcinoma, abdominal imaging was performed immediately pre-operatively and the excised specimen of large bowel was also imaged in vitro immediately postoperatively. The presence or absence of nodal uptake of radionuclide on abdominal scanning did not discriminate between normal and diseased large bowel, and the extent of nodal uptake demonstrated either by abdominal scans or by in vitro scans of excised specimens bore no relationship to the presence or absence of nodal metastases demonstrated histologically in the cancer patients. Pelvic lymphoscintigraphy as performed in this study has no demonstrable value in the diagnosis or staging of colorectal cancer.