The degree of lymphiod infiltration (LI) seen in primary lesions of breast cancer was classified into three ranks, LI (-), LI (+) and LI (++). With the aim of clarifying the influence of LI on the prognosis, the relation between LI, the prognostic factors and disease-free survival rate was investigated. As a result, it was clarified that LI was closely related to the hormone receptors, nuclear grade and nuclear DNA content, representing the grade of malignancy of breast cancer. Moreover, cases of LI (++) showed a lower positive rate of hormone receptors, and seen in cases with a high nuclear grade and cases of types other than the diploid type on the histogram of the nuclear DNA content with the significantly high frequency. The disease-free survival rate was lowest in cases of LI (++).
These results suggest that as far as cumulative disease-free survival rate is concerned, lymphoid infiltration in cases of breast cancer cannot be a host response resulting in an uneventful prognosis but simply a histologic finding reflecting the grade of malignancy of primary lesions.

View full abstract

The depth of invasion of gastric cancer was evaluated by computed tomography using the fat emulsion filling method. This study was designed to assess the relationship between CT findings and the depth of histological invasion of cancer. In the basis of CT findings, cases were classified into five stages; T (-) (difficult to delineate), TO (gastric wall thickened and degree of extension intact), T1 (gastric wall rigid but margin clear), T2 (margin irregular and spiculated appearance) and T3 (border-line with adjacent organ absent). These stages were judged to be characteristic of various degrees of invasion as follows; T (-) and TO to mucosa (m) or submucosal layer (sm), T1 to proper muscle (pm) or subserosal layer (ss), T2 to exposure on serosal surface (se) and T3 to serosal infiltration (si) or exposure on serosal surface with infiltration (sei). As a result, a highly significant correlation between these findings and the degrees of depth of invasion was seen (p<0.001) and each finding showed a high degree of sensitivity and specificity. Our method is safe and non-invasive, and of potential use in determining the depth of invasion of gastric cancer.

View full abstract