Objective To investigate the role of metastatic lymph node ratio (MLR) in the evaluation of prognosis of patients with gastric cancer (GC) at different lymph node numbers examined.Methods Clinical data were reviewed retrospectively in a total 535 patients who underwent surgery for GC.Spearman correlation analysis between MLR or number of metastatic lymph nodes (N) and examined lymph node numbers,Kaplan-Meier method was used for comparison survival rates of N stage and MLR stage.A receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve was used to evaluate the role of N stage and MLR stage in the prognosis of GC patients.Results Metastatic lymph node ratio and number of metastatic lymph nodes correlated with the examined lymph node numbers (r =0.146,r =0.378,P ＜ 0.01,P ＜ 0.001).The 5 year survival rate of MLR0,MLR1,MLR2 and MLR3 patients were 57.5％,69.9％,40.0％ and 21.7％ respectively when examined lymph node numbers ＜ 6 (P ＜ 0.01).The 5-YSR of MLR0,MLR1,MLR2 and MLR3 patients were 86.8％,59.2％,35.8％ and 39.2％ respectively when between 6-10 (P ＜0.001) and the 5-YSR of MLR0,MLR1,MLR2 and MLR3 patients were 88.7％,62.5％,0 and 17.7％ respectively when they ＞ 10(P ＜0.001).AUC of MLR staging was 0.68 ±0.05 when the numbers ＜ 6 (P ＜ 0.001).AUC of MLR staging was 0.72 ± 0.04 at numbers 6-10 (P ＜ 0.001).AUC of MLR staging was 0.79 ± 0.03 when numbers ＞ 10 (P ＜ 0.001).Conclusions MLR was less influenced by lymph node number examined than N.MLR stage has potential superiority to that the N stage in assessing prognosis of GC patients,especially for patients with more than 6 lymph nodes examined.

Objective To introduce how to improve the operation quality and clinical effect of pancreatoduodenectomy (PD). Methods The morbidity and mortality of 126 patients with pancreatic head cancer or peri ampullary cancer treated by PD of traditional Child method and modified Child method ( pancreatic stump closing style pancrea to jejunum anastomosis) in our department from 1973 to 2002 were analyzed retrospectively. Results In modified Child method group, the morbidity of pancreatic leakage and the mortality of the operation were 2.4% and 4.7% respectively, which were significantly lower than those in the traditional method group(P