Objective: This study aims to explore the application value and detection rate of sentinel lymph node (SLN) biopsy in accurate detecting of lymph node metastasis in patients with gastric cancer.

Patients and Methods: A total of 24 patients with Stage I, II or III gastric cancer, from 2015 to 2017, were admitted to our department and underwent D2-gastrectomy plus lymphadenectomy. All 236 nodes were sectioned and stained with immunohistochemical staining (IHC). Lymph node micro-metastasis was defined as evidencing to be positively stained or via the IHC process.

Results: The results indicated that gastric cancer stage 1 was significantly correlated with higher lymphatic metastasis.

Conclusions: Given the very low frequency of malignant non-sentinel lymph nodes was detected in stage 1, it could be logic and safe to merely dissected sentinel nodes without extended lymph node dissection while operation.