The incidence of lymph node metastases in both squamous cell cancer and adenocarcinoma of the oesophagus increases from about 25% for T1 tumours to 100% for T4 tumours.The absolute number of nodes involved also greatly influences the chance of survival. If no nodes are involved, then cure with oesophagectomy approaches 100%, whilst if more than 10 nodes are involved, cure is close to zero.The introduction of immunohistochemical staining techniques has shown that malignant cells in lymph nodes occur more frequently than previously thought. For instance, figures from seven studies of oesophagectomy and lymphadenectomy for squamous cancer showed that 349 patients were classified histologically as NO, and yet 30% of the patients were shown to have micro‐metastases by immunohistochemical staining. For adenocarcinoma, the figures are eight studies, 353 classified NO and 25% shown to have micro‐metastases in lymph nodes.However, there are difficulties. First, there is no consensus on how many sections to cut for each node, and different studies which have looked at 1 section, 3 sections and 5 sections respectively, have produced quite different results. Second, there is no agreement on wh
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