Tumor front grading in prediction of survival and lymph node metastases in patients with laryngeal carcinoma.

PURPOSE Despite innumerous both therapeutic and histopathologic studies that have been performed no morphologic markers are currently available in order to predict the outcome in patients with laryngeal cancer. According to the recent reports nowadays tumor front grading (TFG) is one of the most reliable methods of estimation of the progress of the changes in the peripheral part of tumor and it seems to be one of the technics, which is able to assess the dynamics of the tumor growth quite precisely. In this sudy it was presented direct relation between morphological features of tumor front and survival. MATERIAL AND METHODS The authors have analysed 120 cases of patients who were operated on the laryngeal squamous cell carcinoma in ENT Department Medical University of Lódź between 1995-2000. Features of the morphologic tumor front grading was performed on H&E-stained sections in the peripheral parts of a tumor. Dependence on tumor grade G, tumor size T, lymph node metastases and survival were analysed. RESULTS Our study showed that feature such as TFG is very useful in prediction of survival in patients with laryngeal squamous cell carcinoma in comparison to the histological differentiation degree. The statistical analysis showed no significant correlation between TFG score and tumor size T, nodal status N and G feature. CONCLUSIONS The presented study emphasizes that TFG might influence decisions regarding therapeutic management and could eventually lead to more appropriate and individualized therapy. It is necessary to extend the traditional histopathological diagnosis by TFG, which assesses the dynamics of the malignant process and it seems to be a good prognostic method in prediction of survival of patients with squamous cell carcinoma.