1Department of Surgery, Chung-Ang University College of Medicine, Seoul, Korea. 2Department of Pathology, Chung-Ang University College of Medicine, Seoul, Korea.
ABSTRACT
PURPOSE: Angiogenesis plays an important role in the growth, progression and metastasis of solid tumors. Vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) was thought to be one such angiogenic factor and was also thought to be a selective mitogen for endothelial cells. The purpose of this retrospective study was to evaluate for prognostic significance of VEGF in stomach cancer.
MATERIALS AND METHODS: The sections of formalin-fixed, paraffin embedded from 55 stomach cancer were stained immunohistochemically for VEGF. The rate of VEGF expression and correlation between expression of VEGF and other prognostic factor of stomach cancer were studied.
RESULTS: There were 20 cases (36.4%) of VEGF-positive and 35 cases (63.6%) of VEGF- negative. There were no significant difference between VEGF expression and the histologic type, differentiation, depth of invasion of histologic stage, lymph node involvement. The frequency of hepatic recurrence was higher in patients with VEGF-positive tumor than that af patient with negative tumor (p=0.007). The prognosis of the patients with VEGF positive tumor was worse than that of patients with VEGF negative tumor (p=0.0214).
CONCLUSION: There was a closely significant between positive expression of VEGF and a high incidence of hepatic metastasis, low survival rate. The expression of VEGF could be considered to be one of useful prognostic factor in human gastric carcinoma
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