Table 4.

SWOT analysis of lymph node navigation surgery.

Strengths	Weaknesses
1. Considerable number of clinical trials	1.Controversy surrounds whether there is a survival benefit for progressive gastric cancer
2. Selective lymph node dissection, preservation of function	2.Non-tumour specific fluorescence, fluorescence is usually greater than the area of the sentinel lymph node
3. ICG is easy to apply and has low side effects	3.Metastatic lymph node acquisition rates do not appear to be increasing
4. A broad perspective for fluoroscopy-guided surgery/laparoscopic systems	4.High rate of false negatives in anterior lymph nodes
5. High lymph node test count	5.Difficulties in recognition after neoadjuvant therapy
Opportunities	Threats
1. Selective lymph node dissection for early gastric cancer (D1/D1+)	1.Differences in results between frozen pathology sections and permanent sections limit the accuracy of the extent of surgical excision
2. Additional surgery after ESD can also be beneficial	2.Long learning curve
3. The concept of "lymph basin dissection” instead of "anterior lymph node dissection"	3.ICG extra-cavity leakage, contaminating the operative area
4. Three-dimensional simulation technology	4.Specific probes to track gastric lymph nodes are questionable and lack preclinical/clinical studies, are expensive and have unproven safety
5. Development of quantitative ICG software	5.Other non-specific tracers are not superior to ICG and are expensive