Usefulness of transillumination as a complementary technique for lymph node identification in radical surgical specimens in pathological anatomy

Abstract

Transillumination is a complementary technique to palpation for the identification of lymph nodes that helps to detect them when they are small in size or not identifiable by the traditional technique. Objectives: To demonstrate the effectiveness of transillumination in the identification of lymph node resections in radical specimens. Methods: This is an experimental, observational, descriptive and comparative study. Twenty-seven (27) samples received from radical surgeries that entered the pathological anatomy services that participated in the period January - July 2024 were analyzed and compared with the samples studied in the period January-December 2023.  Results: For the year 2023, the average number of lymph nodes per specimen was 18 for colectomies, 9 for mastectomies, 9 for thyroid, and 12 for skin, while for 2024 the average was 13 for colectomies, 18 for mastectomies, 11 for thyroid, and 12 for skin. Conclusion: These results show that the transillumination technique can be useful as a complementary method to traditional identification, to obtain a higher number of nodes than the average estimated in the different oncology protocols and to establish a more accurate staging.