Objective: To explore an available and sensitive method to detect cervical lymph node micrometastasis in patients with laryngeal squamous cell carcinoma.
Method: The primary tumors and 182 neck lymph nodes from Twenty cases with supraglottic cancer dissection were examined with immunohistochemical (IHC) staining using cytokeratin 19 (CK19), and haematoxylin and eosin (HgE) staining. The frequency of lymph node metastasis and the clinical relevance, and the relationship between overall survival time and lymph node metastases by Log Rank test were analyzed.
Result: The expression of CK19 was 23. 6% of lymph nodes and all of the primary tumors. In Hg-E staining, 16.5% of lymph nodes were positive. There was highly significant difference between them. There were 88.4% lymph nodes, 9.3% lymph nodes and 2.3% lymph node corresponding to the II, III and IV levels by IHC. Lymph node metastases were detected on the II (86.7%) and III levels (13.3%) with H&E. The highest rate of positive lymph nodes was on the II level of the neck. There was highly significant difference between overall survival time and lymph node metastasis in CK19 analysis.
Conclusion: The expression of CK19 may be served as an available method to evaluate occult micrometastases in laryngeal squamous cell carcinoma. High frequency of CK19 was associated with a decreased probability of survival time.