Abstract:

Background and purpose: The non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) has been the highest disease incidence in lung cancer, sputum cytology diagnosis has become an important adjunct to the early diagnosis of lung cancer. The purpose of this study was to investigate the value of thinprep cytological and immunocytochemical method in differentiatial diagnosis of exfoliated cells of malignant sputum in NSCLC. Methods: Sputum samples were detected with thinprep cytology test, a total of 530 cases suspicious tumor cells and malignant tumor cells sputum specimens were randomly selected in continuous paraffin-embedded sections, respectively, NSCLC tumor cell markers CK7, CK5/6, TTF-1, P63, EMA were evaluted by immunocytochemical staining. Results: Of the 530 cases of malignant sputum, these were confirmed 265 cases of lung adenocarcinoma, 246 cases of squamous carcinoma, 19 cases of adeno-squamous carcinoma. Moreover, TTF-1 and CK7 were significantly higher expressed in adenocarcinoma, the positive rates were 92.45% (245/265) and 91.70% (243/265); CK5/6 and P63 were significantly higher expressed in squamous carcinoma, the positive rates were 97.15% (239/246) and 99.59% (245/246). Conclusion: Liquid-based cytology combined with immunocytochemistry had important clinical value in classification and identification of sputum samples, the combination of CK7, CK5/6, TTF-1, P63, EMA can be used for classification and identification of malignant sputum samples between NSCLC, is worthy of promoting in clinical cytopathology diagnosis.

Key words: Thinprep cytological, Immunocytochemistry, Sputum, Non-small cell lung cancer