Thrombocytosis in women with vulvar carcinoma

Thrombocytosis (platelet count >400 x 10(9)/L) is frequently found in assoc iation with malignant disease. Although the pathogenesis of thrombocytosis in malignancy is currently unclear, it appears to be a poor prognostic fact or in patients with lung, colon, breast, and cervical carcinoma. The curren t study was initiated to assess the incidence of thrombocytosis in vulvar c arcinoma and to evaluate its prognostic significance for patients with vulv ar carcinoma. The pretreatment platelet counts of 201 women treated for vul var cancer were reviewed and correlated to the patient's age, stage of dise ase, node status, histologic type, and outcome. Differences between categor ies were analyzed by means of the ANOVA test, and survival was compared usi ng the log-rank test on the Kaplan-Meier life table. Thrombocytosis was pre sented in 14.92% of patients with vulvar malignancies and in 15.46% of pati ents with squamous cell carcinoma of the vulva. No correlation was found be tween thrombocytosis and tumor size, incidence of lymph node metastases, or stage of the disease. The 5-year survival rate for patients with thrombocy tosis was 89.29%, which was not significantly different from the 76.47% 5-y ear survival of patients with normal platelet counts (P = 0.586). When adju sted for age, histological differentiation, number of tumors, staging, inci dence of nodal metastases, platelet count, hemoglobin, and white blood coun t, only the staging, number of tumors, and histological differentiation wer e associated with an unfavorable prognosis (P = 0.0001, P = 0.003, P = 0.03 , respectively). Thrombocytosis was not found to be a prognostic factor in patients with carcinoma of the vulva in this series of 201 patients. (C) 19 99 Academic Press.