1982 Volume 73 Issue 11 Pages 1444-1451
Fifty-nine patients with initially superficial and 40 patients with initially invasive transitional cell carcinoma of the bladder were investigated for the presence of the ABO(H) cell surface antigen. The specimens from the TUR were examined with specific red cell adherence technique. When correlated with clinical stage, 71 per cent of the superficial lesions were positive for the cell surface antigen, while only 48 per cent of the invasive tumors were positive. Of the low grade lesions studied about 80 per cent were positive for the antigen and 44 per cent of the grade 3 tumors retained the antigens in the superficial tumors. Of 59 patients with superficial tumors 15 (25 per cent) suffered from recurrent disease and 4 of them from subsequent developement of invasive disease. But the evidence was not found that loss of antigen of the initial tumors was correlated with a recurrence of the tumor. On the other hand, many of the recurrent tumors, initially positive or weakly positive for the antigen, tend to lose their original SRCA characteristics throughout their clinical evolution.
The findings of this study show that the absence of the antigen especially for the initial high grade superficial tumors and the loss of the antigen at the recurrence may help improve the therapy of bladder cancer.
