The clinical usefulness of determining ploidy patterns in human tumors as measured by slide-based Feulgen...

Some aspects of the clinical value of the Feulgen microspectrophotometric assessment of DNA ploidy patterns in human tumors are reviewed. This method has been shown to be of predictive value for a number of tumor sites and may be independent of other prognostic indicators, such as the histopathologic grade. The association between ploidy and prognosis probably reflects the degree of chromosomal changes in the tumor cells; while it is probable that all malignant tumors are aneuploid, there is a tendency for the changes to be more extensive in more aggressive tumors. Thus, tumors with DNA modes that depart significantly from the diploid and tetraploid levels may have a worse prognosis than do tumors whose modes are at or close to these levels. This has clearly been shown for tumors of the breast, ovary, endometrium and several other sites. For some sites, including the cervix uteri and the large bowel, such a relationship is less clear, probably because tumors at these sites have frequently undergone extensive chromosomal changes that do not result in a significant deviation of the DNA mode from the euploid levels. The use of slide-based DNA analysis systems, in which the morphology of the cells being measured can be assessed, has advantages over flow cytometry that may be crucial in some situations.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)