Evaluation of integrated morpho-biological indicators in breast cancer.

ABSTRACT

A series of 71 patients undergoing surgery for primary breast carcinoma was prospectively studied in order to verify the relationships between clinical and pathological variables, proliferative indexes and DNA-ploidy. Significant correlations between proliferative indexes were found; conversely, DNA-ploidy showed no correlation with either PCNA/cyclin or AgNORs, but only with flow cytometry S-phase fraction (FCM-S) and IF-vimentin. In the 42 patients with a mean follow-up of 42 months, disease-free rate was best predicted by nuclear grade (p < 0.001), histological grade (p < 0.001), mitoses (p 0.001), IF-vimentin (p 0.002), FCM-S (p 0.002), PCNA (p 0.005) and Ag-NORs (p 0.007).