Prognostic significance of immunohistochemically detected blood and lymphatic vessel invasion in colorectal carcinoma: its impact on prognosis.
BACKGROUND
The prognostic significance of blood vessel invasion (BVI) and lymphatic vessel invasion (LVI) is unclear. Because of the absence of specific markers for venous and lymphatic vessels, earlier studies could not reliably distinguish between BVI and LVI.


METHODS
By immunostaining for podoplanin and CD34 antigen, we retrospectively investigated LVI and BVI in 419 tissue specimens of colorectal carcinoma. We performed univariate and multivariate analysis of the clinicopathologic features, frequency of recurrence, and outcome of patients with or without LVI and BVI.


RESULTS
The use of hematoxylin and eosin (H&E) staining to identify BVI and LVI yielded a false positive rate of 9.1% and false negative rate of 12.6%. The incidence of BVI was significantly higher among tumors with LVI than tumors without LVI (P <.001). In logistic multivariate analysis, only LVI (P < .001) was associated with lymph node metastasis and BVI (P = .015) was associated with distant recurrence. Calculating the prognostic relevance, both two invasion types correlated with decreased survival in univariate analysis (both P <.001). In multivariate analysis, BVI (P =.024), lymph node status (P =.003) and tumor stage (P <.001) remained statistically significant factors for survival.


CONCLUSIONS
Our results suggest that immunohistologic evaluation of BVI and LVI could be useful in colorectal carcinoma indicating the risk of lymph node metastasis and recurrence, thereby contributing to prognostic evaluation.
Liang
Pin
P
Fourth Department of Surgery, Tokyo Medical University Kasumigaura Hospital, 3-20-1 Chuo, Ami, Inashiki, Ibaraki, 300-0395, Japan. lp212003@yahoo.com
Nakada
Ichiro
I
Hong
Jian-Wei
JW
Tabuchi
Takanobu
T
Motohashi
Gyo
G
Takemura
Akira
A
Nakachi
Takeshi
T
Kasuga
Teruhiko
T
Tabuchi
Takafumi
T
D000368:Aged; D018952:Antigens, CD34 / Q000032:analysis; D015415:Biomarkers / Q000032:analysis; D001808:Blood Vessels / Q000473:pathology*; D015179:Colorectal Neoplasms / Q000473:pathology*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007150:Immunohistochemistry; D042601:Lymphatic Vessels / Q000473:pathology*; D008297:Male; D008562:Membrane Glycoproteins / Q000032:analysis; D008875:Middle Aged; D009361:Neoplasm Invasiveness; D011379:Prognosis; D000098853:Podoplanin
D018952:Antigens, CD34; D015415:Biomarkers; D008562:Membrane Glycoproteins; C117468:PDPN protein, human; D000098853:Podoplanin