Saeed Akhtar Khan, Naseer Ahmed Chaudrhy, Abdul Wadood Khalid, Gul Naz Akhtar, Shazia N Ibnerasa.
Patterns of Argyrophilic nucleolar organiser regions in pleural and peritoneal effusions.
J Coll Physicians Surg Pak Jan ;16(6):412-5.

Objective: To evaluate AgNOR size and dispersion as alternate methods to AgNOR counts in order to differentiate malignant from non-malignant effusions. Design: Comparative study. Place and Duration of Study: Department of Pathology, Postgraduate Medical Institute, Lahore, from January 2003 to June 2004. Materials and Methods: A total of 240 samples of pleural and peritoneal effusions were centrifuged, deposits smeared on slides and stained with H & E and AgNOR stain. The diagnosis of malignancy or otherwise was made on H and E staining. AgNOR counts, variation in size and dispersion of AgNOR dots in smears were graded and compared in malignant and non-malignant effusions. Results: Mean AgNOR counts of 11.47 ± 3.60 and 11.04 ± 3.89 in malignant pleural and peritoneal effusions, respectively, were significantly (p<0.0001) greater as compared with counts of 3.36 ± 0.69 and 3.35 ± 0.66 in non-malignant effusions. AgNOR size and dispersion were of higher grade in significantly greater proportion of malignant as compared with non-malignant effusions (p<0.0001). Conclusion: Typing of AgNOR size and dispersion was found to be an easy and reproducible alternative to traditional AgNOR counts for differentiating malignant from non-malignant effusions. These parameters should be correlated with already established but expensive techniques of AgNOR area and size imaging by electron microscopy and flow cytometry, as an economical alternative.


USER COMMENTS

This article has been cited in the article published by Bukhari et al in the International Journal of Experimental Pathology 2007, February issue, titled "Modified method of AgNOR staining and its interpretation in Histopathology"
Posted by: saeedkhan on Apr 2007

PakMediNet -Pakistan's largest Database of Pakistani Medical Journals - http://www.pakmedinet.com