Lymphatic vessel density and microvessel density in gastric cancer and their clinical significance

ZHANG Feiran; ZHENG Yang; CHEN Juntian; LI Wei

Abstract：Objective To investigate the levels of lymphatic vessel density (LVD) and microvessel density (MVD) in gastric cancer tissue and their relationship with clinicopathological features. Methods The gastric cancer tissues from 68 patients with gastric cancer were collected from February 2004 to February 2007. The LVD and MVD were marked by D2-40 and CD31, respectively. The im-munohistochemistry was used to detect the peritumoral and intratumoral expressions of D2-40 and CD31 to calculate LVD and MVD. Then relationships between peritumoral and intratumoral LVD, MVD and clinicopathological variables ( tumor size, lymph node metastasis, vis-ceral metastasis, TNM stage, sex, age, degree of differentiation, Lauren type and pathological type) and prognosis were analyzed. Re-sults The peritumoral and intratumoral LVD were 4?6±2?0 and 8?2±3?5, and the peritumoral and intratumoral MVD were 46?3±16?5 and 47?6± 15?3, respectively. The peritumoral LVD is related with tumor size, lymph node metastasis, visceral metastasis and TNM stage, but not with sex, age, degree of differentiation and pathological type (P>0?05). There was no relationship between the above clin-icopathological features and intratumoral LVD, peritumoral and intratumoral MVD. The median overall survival ( OS) was 48?6 months. The median OS of patients with peritumoral low LVD was 31?0 months, shorter than 43?0 months of peritumoral high LVD with significant differences ( P<0?05) . The median OS of patients with peritumoral high and low MVD was 46?0 and 48?0 months with no significant difference ( P>0?05) . Conclusion The peritumoral LVD is closely related with the clinicopathological factors and prognosis of gastric cancer, which may play a predictive role in the development and progression of gastric cancer.