[Pancreatic cancer and mast cells]

The paper presents 69-year old patient with a relatively long-term survival and a large number of mast cells (MCs) in pancreatic cancer. The patient was operated in February 1986 because of symptoms of pyloric stenosis and gastrojejunostomy was performed according to Brown's method. The patient died in September 1987 due to disseminated neoplastic disease. The survival time after the diagnosis was 583 days. Histopathologic examination during operation and postmortem revealed pancreatic scirrhous adenocarcinoma. MCs in sections were stained with toluidine blue. The number of MCs per 20 microscopic fields in each of five sections at a magnification 200 x was counted, and the average count was 35 per one microscopic field. In a control group of 20 patients with pancreatic adenocarcinoma and no treatment, the identical but retrospective examinations were carried out using formalin-fixed and paraffin-embedded tumor sections. The count of MCs was from 2 to 12 (average 8) per one microscopic field and no correlation between the number of MCs and the survival time in individual patients (average 79 days) was found.