Abstract
The present study was performed to improve early lung cancer diagnosis in bronchial washing fluid, thereby increasing the diagnostic sensitivity of bronchoscopy by means of high-resolution flow cytometry (FC). We combined dual-parameter DNA/protein FC and conventional cytology in bronchial washing fluid samples from 112 patients with neoplastic and non-neoplastic lung diseases and found 43% of histologically confirmed tumor cases to be cytologically positive; 63% of the tumor samples were aneuploid, 52% of the aneuploid cases were cytologically positive and 48% were negative. In the negative cases, FC was an independent diagnostic factor. In 32% of the cases, FC also failed to detect abnormalities. However, the combination of both techniques increased the sensitivity in detecting neoplastic cells to 73%. Furthermore, simultaneous DNA/protein analysis allowed the recognition of aneuploid cell lines not detectable by single DNA measurement. Identification of aneuploid subpopulations by dual-parameter analysis in cytologically negative one-parameter FC “diploid” samples assumes an important diagnostic value. Dual-parameter DNA/protein FC is a valuable technique that increases the diagnostic yield of bronchoscopy with no risk for the patient and a low additional cost.
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Received: 20 February 1997 / Accepted: 8 July 1997
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Cicconetti, F., Teodori, L., Persiani, M. et al. Increased number of cancer cells in bronchial washing fluid detected by combining conventional cytology and high-resolution flow cytometry. J Cancer Res Clin Oncol 123, 571–577 (1997). https://doi.org/10.1007/s004320050107
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s004320050107