PROGNOSTIC-SIGNIFICANCE OF CELL-DNA CONTENT IN EARLY-STAGE OVARIAN-CANCER (FIGO STAGE-I AND STAGE-II A) BY MEANS OF AUTOMATIC IMAGE CYTOMETRY/

Paraffin-embedded material from 69 patients with epithelial ovarian ca ncer FIGO stages I and II/A (including 21 patients with borderline car cinoma) was studied with automatic DNA image cytometry. Univariate ana lysis indicated a significant difference in survival based on the pres ence of nuclei with high DNA content (higher than 5 C). A group of pat ients with less than 0.2% cells with high DNA content had a 6-year sur vival of 87%, whereas in a group of patients with more than 0.2% of su ch cells, 6-year survival was 49%. This parameter remained significant when used in a group of stage I/a and I/b patients. Statistical analy sis of diploid vs. non-diploid tumors also showed significant differen ce in survival. Separate analysis of 48 invasive ovarian cancers indic ated that ploidy, the percentage of cells with high DNA content and tu mor stage (stage I/a + b vs. stages I/c + II/a) reached significance f or survival, whereas grading did not. In addition, comparison of clini cal stage, grading, ploidy and the percentage of cells exceeding 5 C w ith a threshold at 0.2% by means of a multivariate analysis (Cox regre ssion model) showed that only the percentage of cells exceeding 5 C re mained statistically significant. (C) 1994 Wiley-Liss, Inc.