Premium
The prognostic importance of volume‐weighted mean nuclear volume, mitotic index, and other stereologically measured quantitative parameters in supraglottic laryngeal carcinoma
Author(s) -
Bentzen Jens Knud Daugård,
Hansen Hanne Sand,
Nielsen Henrik Winther
Publication year - 1999
Publication title -
cancer
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 3.052
H-Index - 304
eISSN - 1097-0142
pISSN - 0008-543X
DOI - 10.1002/(sici)1097-0142(19991201)86:11<2222::aid-cncr8>3.0.co;2-u
Subject(s) - medicine , mitotic index , carcinoma , volume (thermodynamics) , laryngeal neoplasm , nuclear medicine , pathology , mitosis , biology , microbiology and biotechnology , physics , quantum mechanics
BACKGROUND Stereologically measured mean nuclear volume has been proven to have prognostic importance in several types of cancer, such as malignant melanoma and carcinomas of the breast, oral region, bladder, and uterine cervix. The main purpose of the current study was to investigate the possible prognostic importance of mean nuclear volume and mitotic index in carcinoma of the supraglottic larynx. METHODS The study was performed with a stratified, random sample of 113 patients from a well‐defined group of 386 patients with supraglottic laryngeal carcinoma treated with radiotherapy at the Finsen Institute in Copenhagen. Histologic sections from pretreatment biopsies were used to estimate the following parameters: mean nuclear volume (V̄v(| 3¯ 0 )), mitotic index (MI), number of nuclei per mm 2 (QA), mean nuclear profile area (Anuc), and the area fraction of nuclei in cancer tissue (AA). The geometric means of the parameters were used as cutoff points in a single factor and in a multivariate survival analysis with relapse free survival as the primary endpoint. RESULTS The geometric means of the measured parameters were (V̄v(| 3¯ 0 )) = 480 μ 3 , QA = 3630 nuclei/μ 2 cancer tissue, MI = 0.48 mitosis/100 nuclei, AA = 0.21, and Anuc = 57.9 μ 2 . CONCLUSIONS None of the stereologically estimated parameters proved to have prognostic importance, whereas tumor size, and lymph node status did. The method of adaptive, stratified, random sampling used in this study can save a great deal of work and is highly recommended by the authors. Cancer 1999;86:2222–8. © 1999 American Cancer Society.