Table 6.

Recommendations about numbers of lymph nodes to examine in colorectal cancer resection specimens

Fist author (Ref)	Year of publication	Study objective	No. lymph nodes
Hermanek26	1993	Maximise ascertainment of Dukes’s stage C disease	20+
Goldstein27	1996	Maximise detection of nodal metastases	17–20
Maurel28	1998	Optimal ascription to node positive or node negative categories	8+
Cserni29	1999	Maximise proportion of node positive cases	6–16
Wong30	1999	Generate stage distribution comparable with US National Cancer Data Base report	14
Goldstein31	2002	Maximise detection of nodal metastases	All available
Johnson32	2002	Conformity to American Joint Committee on Cancer recommendations	12
Cserni33	2002	Reliability of node negative ascription	All available