ABSTRACT
OBJECTIVE@#To investigate the rules of lymphatic metastasis of rectal carcinoma, and to help clinical diagnosis and treatment.@*METHODS@#A retrospective analysis was performed in the 979 patients with rectal carcinoma who underwent surgical resection from 1995 to 2004. The associations between lymphatic metastasis and clinicopathologic variables were evaluated by Chi-squared test and logistic regression.@*RESULTS@#The rate of lymph node metstasis was 71.4% for patients younger than 30 years old, 40.7% in the patients with tumor diameters over 6 centimeters, 82.5% in the patients with extraneous tumor invasion, 71.6% for patients of poor-differentiated adenocarcinoma, 70.4% for patients with mucoid adenocarcinoma, 100% for patients with signet-ring cell carcinoma and 46.4% for patients with more than half intestinal circumference invasion. Logistic regression analysis showed that the degree of lymphatic metastasis was related to the differentiating degrees, depths of tumor invasion and intestinal circumference invasion, and the differentiating degree was the major factor.@*CONCLUSION@#The lymphatic metastasis of rectal carcinoma is related to age, tumor size, intestinal circumference invasion, depth of tumor invasion and the differentiating degree of the tumor; the differentiating degree is the major factor.