Majority of Variation in Lymph Node Assessment for Colon Cancer Linked to Non-modifiable Tumor Factors

Researchers investigated the factors contributing to variation in lymph node assessment for colon cancer and found that non-modifiable tumor factors were responsible for the majority of variation. A dataset of over 280,000 patient records from 15,000 surgeons across 1,200 facilities was analyzed. The achievement of the 12 lymph node standard was high at 90.3%. Factors such as age, sex, primary tumor site, tumor grade, t stage, and comorbidities were significantly associated with meeting the standard. Modifiable factors accounted for 29% of the variation in lymph node assessment.