[The prognostic significance of inflammatory cells in malignant human soft tissue tumors. Malignancy grading]

These studies are based on an analysis of 160 spindle cell and/or pleomorphic malignant soft tissue tumors of adults and are aimed at providing an answer to the question of whether or not inflammatory cells in tumor tissue are of prognostic importance with regard to overall survival time. In a univariate analysis, granulocytes and lymphocytes did not show any statistical correlation with survival periods, whereas such correlation was revealed with significance to survival periods by plasma cells and mast cells. With multivariate analysis used and presence of necrotic areas included, only mast cell infiltration remained to be significantly correlated with survival time. Also presented in this paper is a proposed scheme of malignancy grading in which two properly established indicators are scored together with "mast cell infiltration", that is "mitosis count" and "necrosis amount". The three grades of malignancy resulting from this grading procedure are shown to be related with high significance to overall survival time.