The Journal of Bone and Joint Surgery, Vol 70, Issue 5 751-759, Copyright © 1988 by Journal of Bone and Joint Surgery, Inc
The use of flow cytometry as a diagnostic aid in the management of soft-tissue tumors
T Matsuno, MC Gebhardt, AL Schiller, AE Rosenberg and HJ Mankin
Orthopaedic Research Laboratories, Massachusetts General Hospital Cancer Center, Harvard Medical School, Boston 02114.
The diagnosis and staging of soft-tissue tumors is a complex problem, and
even the experienced pathologist sometimes finds it difficult to determine
whether a particular lesion is benign or malignant and whether a sarcoma is
high or low grade. However, this information is essential in planning
treatment. Flow cytometric analysis of nuclear DNA is a method to determine
the number of cells that are in the process of replicating or dividing (S
or G2, or M phase), since these cells have abnormal concentrations of DNA
(DNA aneuploidy). Previous studies from our laboratory have established the
relative value of this technique as an adjunct in the staging of primary
bone tumors. In the past four years, 146 soft-tissue lesions have been
evaluated by flow cytometry, using propidium iodide staining of isolated
cells that were obtained in the fresh state. The tumors were forty-two
benign neoplasms, ten lesions of synovial origin, thirty desmoids
(aggressive but not malignant), and sixty-four sarcomas ranging in grade
from 1 to 3 on a 3-point scale. The over-all values for flow cytometry
showed that a number of factors correlated well with the grade of the
tumor, but the best correlations were with the mean concentration of DNA (a
calculated average for concentrations of DNA for the various types of cells
in the lesion), the total percentage of cells in S-phase plus the G2 and
M-phases (called percentage of replicating and dividing cells), and the
presence or absence of DNA aneuploidy.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)
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