Morphometric characteristics of hepatocellular dysplasia

Morphometric study of liver biopsies from six entities (normal tissue, post-hepatitis cirrhosis, post-alcoholic cirrhosis, cancer-related cirrhosis, hepatocellular adenoma and hepatocellular adenocarcinoma) confirmed that this technique can be a valuable adjunct to histopathologic study in the examination of such specimens. As expected, measurements in cirrhotic nodules showed two populations of cells. The so-called "large dysplastic cells" had nuclear and cellular areas close to those of normal hepatocytes and should thus be considered to be hyperplastic elements, not precancerous elements. The smaller dysplastic cells had morphometric values close to those of the corresponding hepatocellular carcinomas, indicating that these cells are the truly precancerous ones. Therefore, while the study confirmed that hepatic cirrhosis is a precancerous lesion, it also showed that the term hepatocellular dysplasia must be restricted to the smaller type of cells found in such nodules.