On Lymph Node Trays in Lung Cancer Surgery

Abstract

with deep interest the article by Osarogiagbon et al. 1 in the August issue of the Journal of Thoracic Oncology. I would like to congratulate the authors on calling the attention of the readers to a seemingly minuscule technical detail: the proper handling and transporting of lymph nodes removed during lung cancer surgery. Unfortunately enough, the reference list of the article gives the misleading impression that no previous attempts to solve the problem addressed by the authors have been published so far. The reality is different. An article on a sterile moulded tray with cupped containers in the exact topographical positions of the hilar and mediastinal lymph nodes to assist the surgeon to achieve a systematic nodal collection was published 5 years ago. 2 The article is freely downloadable from http://ejcts. oxfordjournals.org/content/31/2/311. The tool has been in clinical use since this publication and is the third search result when one types lymphnode tray in Google search. The application of the same principle has led to the production of a similar tray representing the cervical region to be used in ear-nose-throat malignancies. 3 A Hungarian publication with English abstract indexed in the Medline 4 may have secondary importance, but the article published in a leading journal of the field should have not passed unnoticed.