Open AccessDetection of cervical lymph node micrometastasis and isolated tumor cells in oral squamous cell carcinoma using immunohistochemistry and serial sectioning
Author(s) -
Isha Dhawan,
Simarpreet Virk Sandhu,
Rajat Bhandari,
Neena Sood,
Ramanpreet Kaur Bhullar,
Neerja Sethi
Publication year - 2016
Publication title -
journal of oral and maxillofacial pathology/journal of oral and maxillofacial pathology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.455
H-Index - 25
eISSN - 1998-393X
pISSN - 0973-029X
DOI - 10.4103/0973-029x.190946
Subject(s) - micrometastasis , immunohistochemistry , pathology , medicine , metastasis , h&e stain , cytokeratin , neck dissection , lymph node , staining , carcinoma , cervical lymph nodes , cancer
Oral squamous cell carcinoma (OSCC) comprises one of the largest subsets of cancers with a tendency for regional metastasis. Nodal status is a key prognostic indicator in patients with OSCC, particularly with N0 neck. Occult metastasis in the form of micrometastasis (MM) and isolated tumor cells (ITCs), often goes undetected by routine hematoxylin and eosin (H&E) examination using 1-2 sections for analysis. This limitation could be overcome by combining serial sectioning (SS) with immunohistochemistry (IHC) for the detection of MM and ITC. Pan-cytokeratin (pan-CK) (AE1/AE3) is particularly a useful marker to detect these deposits as their presence has resulted in varied interpretations and different applications of the tumor-node-metastasis system.