[Advantages of cytodiagnostics in ascites (author's transl)]

Investigations were made on 253 patients. In 44 patients with peritoneal carcinosis, cell imprints and histological investigations of tissues from the changes in the peritoneum, taken during laparoscopy have been performed. In 122 out of 151 patients with neoplastically stipulated ascites (80.8 per cent) tumour cells have been found in the ascitic fluid. The false negative results represented 19.8 per cent and the false positive results--2.0 per cent. In all cell imprints from peritoneal tissues tumour cells have been detected even when these were absent in the ascitic fluid. In 2 out of 49 patients (4 per cent) the histological investigation of bioptic material from the peritoneum showed no neoplastic changes. The activity of gamma-glutamyltransferase and alkaline phosphatase in the ascitic fluid of patients with carcinosis was higher than in the remaining patients, whilst the 5'-nucleotidase did not show particular deviations. The cytologic method was well tolerated by the patients and showed higher specificity, sensitiveness, simplicity and realization and in 80.8 per cent solved the diagnostic problems and made useless the application of other labour-consuming, burdensome and more expensive methods of investigation.