Small Animal Surgery Resident Ontario Veterinary College, Ontario, Canada
Recommendations for use of non-selective staging cervical lymphadenectomy are not standardized. The purpose of this study was to evaluate and describe postoperative complications following bilateral cervical lymphadenectomy in dogs with maxillofacial tumors.Medical records from 5 academic referral hospitals between 2016-2020 with at least 1 ACVS Fellow of Surgical Oncology were reviewed. All included dogs underwent a single ventral midline cervical incision with extirpation of ≥ four lymph nodes. A minimum follow-up period of 2 weeks was required for inclusion.Data analysis revealed an intraoperative complication and mortality rate of 0%, and an overall postoperative complication rate of 83.1% (69/83 dogs) with 93.8% being considered Grade 1 (mild). Comparison of metastatic disease between preoperative nodal cytology and postoperative histopathology revealed twice as many metastatic lymph nodes on histopathology. Eleven metastatic nodes were contralateral to the tumor. Cervical lymphadenectomy is associated with a high rate of postoperative complications but the majority of these are considered mild. Histopathology has a significantly higher yield of diagnostic metastatic results, when compared to cytology alone. Limitations were related to the retrospective nature of the study. Additionally, statistical agreement for staging was compared for each patient, but could not be determined at the level of each lymph node. Non-selective bilateral cervical lymphadenectomy is associated with self-limiting, mild complications. Consideration of this technique to complete staging and reduce tumor burden from metastatic lymph nodes may have a prognostic value.
