PURPOSE This study evaluated the prognostic impact of the lymph node ratio (LNR; i.e., the ratio of positive to dissected lymph nodes) on recurrence and survival in breast cancer patients with positive axillary lymph nodes (LNs). METHODS The study cohort was comprised of 330 breast cancer patients with positive axillary nodes who received postoperative radiotherapy between 1987 and 2004. Ten-...

In this issue of Blood, Gerrard et al report the outcome and histologic classification of children and adolescents with mediastinal large B-cell lymphoma (MLBL), and highlight the need for new treatment strategies.

Angiogenesis, the formation of new blood vessels from a preexisting vascular bed, is a complex multistep process, which may also permit metastasis. To investigate how tumor angiogenesis correlates with tumor histologic type in breast carcinoma diagnosed on core biopsy, microvessels were counted (and graded the density of microvessels) within the initial invasive carcinomas of 155 patients. Usin...

IgA nephropathy exhibits considerable histologic variability, ranging from normal histology to diffuse proliferative and crescentic glomerulonephritis (GN), although the majority of cases are characterized by focal or diffuse, predominantly mesangial proliferative GN. A number of different histologic classifications have been devised for IgA nephropathy, focusing on glomerular changes, tubulo-i...

A novel molecular classification of gastric cancer by the Asian Cancer Research Group (ACRG) is a potential advance in diagnosis and treatment, and it helps to determine prognosis. The use of immunohistochemistry (IHC) rather than gene expression analysis to determine tumor subtypes was evaluated with the aim of determining the feasibility of using the ACRG molecular classification. A total of ...

AIM Since World Health Organization (WHO) histologic typing of tumors of the thymus publication in 1999 only a few studies correlated this classification with the clinical features of the patients. We present the results of a retrospective analysis on patients, operated on for a thymoma, whose specimens were available, to compare the WHO thymoma histologic classification to the clinical behavio...

BACKGROUND The importance of histologic classification in selecting the appropriate systemic therapy for non-small-cell lung cancer (nsclc) came to attention in 2007. In British Columbia, that information was communicated through international and national meetings, our centralized cancer care program, and to the medical community at large in multidisciplinary forums. We examined the effects of...

BACKGROUND The incidence of adenocarcinomas as multiple primary lung cancers (MPLCs) is increasing. How to determine the treatment strategies of MPLCs, especially second primary lung adenocarcinomas (SPLACs), and the prognostic factors associated with it are unclear. METHODS The clinical records of patients undergoing surgery for second adenocarcinomas based on Martini-Melamed criteria betwee...

Traditionally, epithelial ovarian, tubal, and peritoneal cancers have been viewed as separate entities with disparate origins, pathogenesis, clinical features, and outcomes. Additionally, previous classification systems for ovarian cancer have proposed two primary histologic groups that encompass the standard histologic subtypes. Recent data suggest that these groupings no longer accurately ref...