Role of lymphatic vessel density in colorectal cancer : prognostic significance and clinicopathologic correlations

Backgrounds and aims : Over the past decades the identification of several molecules that are expressed specifically in the lymphatic endothelial cells has resulted in marked advances in the field of lymphangiogenesis. We aimed to measure LVD in colorectal cancer patients and to compare it with microvascular density (MVD) - a marker of angiogenesis - and patients' clinicopathological param- eters and survival, as the measurement of lymphatic vessel density (LVD) has been documented in various tumor types, including colorectal cancer. Patients and methods : Fifty one patients who had undergone surgical resection for stage I-III colorectal cancer entered this study. LVD and MVD were determined immunohistochemically with the use of D2-40 and CD34 antibody respectively. The evalua- tion of LVD was performed by both visual and computer-aided image analysis. Results : The majority of lymphatic vessels were located in the peritumoral areas rather than within the tumor. The results obtained from the image analyzer correlated significantly with the data obtained using visual counting with light microscopy. Both visual and image analysis LVD failed to correlate with patients' age and gender and tumor location, stage, grade, MVD count and survival. Conclusions : The biologic role of the lymphatic vasculature in tumor progression remains controversial. The present study failed to associate LVD with outcome markers and prognosis and further studies would be required to verify our results. (Acta gastroenterol. belg., 2015, 78, 223-227).