Radical prostate cancer surgery requires both the removal of the primary tumor and removal of lymph nodes that contain metastases. The latter requires optimization of the current sentinel lymph node (tumor draining lymph node; SLN) biopsy procedures. We hypothesise that by placing the tracer deposits at the location with the highest tumorburden, more tumor specific drainage patterns can be identified. We aim to introduce a tumor directed injection procedure and compare this new method to the current standard by determining the correlation between the location of the hybrid tracer deposits in paraffin-embedded prostate specimens, the tumor spread throughout the prostate, and the preoperatively identified location of SLNs. It is expected that tumor directed tracer deposition, in combination with improved surgical identification of SLNs during image-guided interventions, will enable identification of more SLNs that contain (micro-)metastasis. Ultimately, this may help eliminate the need for invasive lymph node dissection procedures.
