[Cancer register for cervix carcinoma--useful and necessary?]

During the last two decades, cancer research has shifted from using cell lines and animal models to using methods and models that use human tissues from defined tumors. DNA and RNA can be analysed from fresh tissue from samples obtained at surgery, biopsy, cytologies or necropsy as well as from paraffin-embedded material. Archival material has several advantages: not only it is from individuals for whom disease process has been documented, but also data may available about the outcome as well as the response to treatment. Material available from well-controlled clinical trails would enable a wide range of hypotheses to be tested. Laser microdissection allows to sample cellular material from histopathologic well documented areas of the tumor, including special differentiated areas. It is necessary to establish tumor registries, especially in gynecologic oncology to get material from well described tumors for molecular profiling, the molecular analysis of clonality in tumors and malignant progression. At the Leipzig University a cervical tumor registry has been established in March 1979. Until the end of December of the year 2000 1,030 cases of surgically treated cervical cancer from stage pT1b1 up to pT2b including paraffin blocks and original histologic slides were collected. First evaluation up to the end of 1996 (n = 919) has shown, that 27.2% of the patients represented with histological proven pelvic lymph node metastases. The majority of cases were staged pT1b1 (52.1%), followed by stage pT2b (23.9%), pT1b2 (9.7%) and pT2a (9.5%). In 44 cases stage was not documented. In about 95.2% datas about the follow up of the patients were available. In conclusion, tumor registries are helpful in establishing and controlling uniform criteria for the accurate determination of prognostic factors and exact histopathologic evaluation can ideally be combined with new tools in molecular pathology, i.e. histopathology meets genomics.