Survival of Rectal Carcinoma Patients Studied with Flow Cytometric DNA Analysis

Abstract

The cellular DNA content was measured with flow cytometry from paraffin-embedded materials in 197 patients with primary rectal cancer who had had “curative” resection. All patients were followed clinically for from 2.5 to 7 years. There was a significant difference in recurrent rate between DNA diploid and aneuploid tumors. The cumulative survival rate (Kaplan-Meier) of curative operative rectal carcinomas was worse in DNA aneuploid than in DNA diploid tumors (p<0.05). These data suggest that tumor DNA content is an important prognostic indicator for both recurrence and overall survival in patients with primary rectal carcinoma.