The Relationship Between Intratumoral And Peritumoral Lymphangiogenesis And The Clinical And Pathologic Characteristics In Papillary Thyroid Carcinoma

Objective In order to investigate the correlation of intratumoral and peritumoral lymphangiogenesis to the characteristic of invasion and metastasis of papillary thyroid carcinoma(PTC), the intratumoral and peritumoral lymphatic vessel of PTC were detected by way of immunohistochemical staining of lymphatic endothelial markers VEGFR-3 and LYVE-1.Methods The clinical, pathologic and follow-up informations of 90 patients with PTC treated from April 2002 to October 2004 in department of head and neck cancer, Tianjin cancer hospital were reviewed and analysised which were divided into two groups of more aggressive PTE(APTC) and usual PTC(UPTC).30 cases of benign tumors and normal thyroid tissue were used as control. This study was to investigate the relationship between intratumoral and peritumoral lymphatic vessel density(LVD) and clinical biological behavior of PTC in different groups.Results They were showed that the lymphatic microvessels were larger and denser in the peritumoral areas than the intratumoral areas of PTC. The intratumoral and peritumoral LVD of PTC were significant higher than that of normal thyroid tissue (P＜0.05). The peritumoral LVD was significant higher than that of intratumoral in PTC(P＜0.05). The peritumoral LVD were significant higher in PTC than benign lesion(P＜0.05). The intratumoral and peritumoral LVD were significant higher in the group of having regional invasion and lymph node metastasis than them of the group without regional invasion(P＜0.05) and lymph node metastasis(P＜0.05).The intratumoral and peritumoral LVD were significant higher in APTC than UPTC (P＜0.001, P＜0.05) .The intratumoral and peritumoral LVD were significant higher in PTC of clinical stage N₀ with cervical lymph node metastasis(P＜0.05).Conclusions The lymphangiogenesis in intratumoral and peritumoral areas were significant higher than normal thyroid tissue. The lymphangiogenesis in peritumoral areas was significant higher in PTC than benign lesion. The intratumoral and peritumoral lymphangiogenesis was significant higher in the group of having regional invasion and lymph node metastasis than that in the group without regional invasion and lymph node metastasis. The lymphangiogenesis in intratumoral and peritumoral areas was significant higher in APTC than UPTC. Therefor the lymphangiogenesis may be a marker to detect the latent lymphatic metastasis of PTC, it is may be useful to make the decision to do the elective neck dissection in N₀ stage PTC.