Optimal lymphadenectomy for gastric cancer: is there a magic number?

Xu and colleagues propose the ambitious tasks of evaluating in gastric cancer patients “the long-term effect of number of examined lymph nodes on the prognosis of patients,” and exploring “the optimal number of lymph nodes for accurate staging in patients with node-negative gastric cancer after D2 dissection” (1). These two distinctly different goals require very dissimilar analytic strategies. To our surprise, they report one number, not two: 16. The question persists—“Is there a magic number of resected lymph nodes that ensures an optimal lymphadenectomy for gastric cancer?”