Is surgical pathology a predictor of outcome in post-operative lymph leakage?
Most patients with post-operative lymph leak receiving TPN alone survived. It is rare for re-operation to be necessary in patients who have lymph leaks in the neck or retroperitoneum. Re-operative intervention is more commonly performed in lymph leak after oesophagectomy.
PIgR is uniformly expressed in intestinal metaplasia and in a subgroup of adenocarcinomas of the distal esophagus, GE junction, and stomach. Esophageal and GE junction adenocarcinomas that do not express PIgR show more frequent lymph node metastasis, suggesting that lack of expression of PIgR identifies a subgroup of more aggressive adenocarcinomas.