Abstract:

Lymph nodes are the most common metastatic sites of colorectal cancer, which is also considered as important areas for surgeons to surgically remove. Due to the low diagnostic accuracy of metastatic lymph nodes, especially enlarged lymph nodes are often misdiagnosed as metastatic lymph nodes, which has led to the expanded lymph node dissection becoming the routine strategy for colorectal cancer, aiming at removing the metastatic lymph nodes to the maximum extent. However, in addition to being a common target for metastasis, lymph nodes are also secondary lymphatic organs, which carry out important anti-tumor immune functions. The regional lymph nodes surrounding the tumor store a large number of tumor-specific immune cells, which provide extremely important immune support to promote the success of immunotherapy. Therefore, excessive lymph node dissection will inevitably bring about a blow to and destroy the immune status of the body. Based on this, how to view the dual identity of lymph nodes as "friend and foe", and how to carry out precise diagnosis and treatment of lymph nodes, so that metastatic lymph nodes can be completely removed while preserving the physiological function of normal lymph nodes, these propositions have become important propositions that need to be solved for most malignant tumors, including colorectal cancer.

Key words: Colorectal neoplasms, Lymph nodes, Immunization, Surgery