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Impact of using elastic stains for detection of venous invasion in the prognosis of patients with lymph node negative colorectal cancer

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Abstract

Purpose and methods

Patients with nodal negative colorectal cancer (CRC) suffer recurrent or metastatic disease in 40% of cases after surgical resection. To investigate a potential prognostic impact of vascular tumor infiltration, we retrospectively analyzed 185 nodal negative stage I and II CRC specimens for the presence of intra- and/or extramural venous invasion (V1IM/V1EM) using elastic stains of all tumor sections and correlated our findings with the clinical follow-up.

Results

Venous invasion was observed in 43 (23.2%) patients by elastic stains compared with six (3.2%) using HE only (p < 0.05). Venous invasion was more common in stage II than in stage I tumors (28.1% versus 5.1%; p < 0.05). However, survival analyses showed no significant differences in 5-year survival rates comparing patients with and without venous invasion (68% and 71%, p = 0.543) or patients with V1IM and V1EM (62% vs. 74%, p = 0.473), respectively.

Conclusions

Our data emphasize the need for standardized criteria, including elastic stains, to reliably detect vascular invasion in CRC. Doing so, however, the prognostic impact of venous invasion in stage I and II CRC may be lower as previously anticipated.

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Conflict of interest statement

We declare that we have no conflict of interest.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Cantonal Institute for Pathology, Cantonal Hospital Liestal, Mühlemattstrasse 11, 4410, Liestal, Switzerland

    Daniel Baumhoer, Thore Thiesler & Gieri Cathomas

  2. Department of Surgery, Cantonal Hospital Liestal, Liestal, Switzerland

    Christoph A. Maurer

  3. Department of Surgery, Cantonal Hospital Bruderholz, Bruderholz, Switzerland

    Andreas Huber

Authors
  1. Daniel Baumhoer
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  2. Thore Thiesler
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  3. Christoph A. Maurer
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  4. Andreas Huber
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  5. Gieri Cathomas
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Gieri Cathomas.

Additional information

Daniel Baumhoer and Thore Thiesler contributed equally to this work.

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Baumhoer, D., Thiesler, T., Maurer, C.A. et al. Impact of using elastic stains for detection of venous invasion in the prognosis of patients with lymph node negative colorectal cancer. Int J Colorectal Dis 25, 741–746 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00384-010-0890-0

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00384-010-0890-0

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