An optimized battery of eight antibodies that can distinguish mast gases at epithelial mesothelioma from adenocarcinoma

An immunocytochemical battery comprising 9 antibodies specifically distingu ishes 80% of the epithelial malignant mesotheliomas from adenocarcinomas. T he discriminatory power of antibodies to calretinin was tested together wit h this battery to determine whether the performance thereby could be improv ed. The study comprises 119 mesotheliomas of epithelial or mixed phenotype and 57 adenocarcinoma metastases in the pleural cavity. The differences between the 2 groups were highly significant for all record ed parameters, but typical reactivity for all parameters was seen in only 6 (5.0%) of the 119 mesotheliomas. An algorithm based on stepwise logistic r egression was used to interpret divergent reaction patterns. Most diagnosti c information was obtained with 8 of the parameters studied. The resulting algorithm identified almost 90% of the mesotheliomas with high specificity. The battery can be performed in 2 steps: several adenocarcinomas first are diagnosed with a few antibodies, applying the rest of the battery on the r emaining unresolved cases.