ABSTRACT
Objective To measure and define the distribution of left gastric lymph nodes.Meth- ods From Jan.2004 to Apr.2005,silver clips were set around the root of the left gastric artery in 124 pa- tients with esophageal and gastric cardia carcinoma,X-ray films at 0?and 90?simulator gantry in the radio- therapeutic position were taken.Then,the data of the superior,lower,left,right,anterior and posterior bor- der in each patient was recorded.With SAS 8.02 software,data of minimum area which covered the left gas- tric lymph node in different incidences were obtained.Results According to the analysis of Shapiro- Wilk,Kolmogorov-Smimov,Cramer-von Mises and Anderson-Darling tests,each border was of normal distri- bution,with equal frequency in the male and female,despite the actual results in different genders.Pearson Correlation Coefficients analysis did not suggest a significant relationship between the border and height, weight and size of vertebrae,which formed the minimum area covering the left gastric area at frequency of 100%,95%,90% and 85%,which were drawn out through the calculation.Conclusions Aiming at completely identifying the normal distribution of the left gastric lymph node,more patients are required to be in the pool.For the time being,location in the left gastric area can be obtained from details of the results in the present study.