Clinicopathologic Significance of Lymphatic Vessel Invasion and Blood Vessel Invasion in Gastric Cancer

PURPOSE: The vessel invasion by cancer cells can be easily detected with the photomicroscope, but still there is an arguement on the value as a prognostic factor. The following study was conducted to evaluate the clinicopathologic significance of blood vessel invasion (BVI) and lymphatic vessel invasion (LVI) as a potential prognostic factor in gastric cancer treatment. MATERIALS AND METHODS: 618 patients who had undergone gastrectomies for gastric cancer at the Department of Surgery, Yonsei University College of Medicine, from August, 1993 to December, 1994, were retrospectively reviewed. Patients, based on the presence of BVI and/or LVI by HE stain, were arranged into three groups: Group 1 (n=338) consisted of patients with no evidence of BVI and LVI; group 2 (n=224), with evidence of either BVI or LVI; group 3 (n=56), with evidence of both BVI and LVI. The clinicopathologic features were analyzed and the survival rates of BVI, LVI and the three groups were studied. RESULTS: BVI-positive patients were seen in 10.5% of all patients, and LVI-positive, in 43.9%. Certain factors such as tumor size, gross type, depth of invasion, lymph node metastasis, distant metastasis, and TNM staging showed significant differences among the three groups by univariate analyses. Survival rates between the BVI-positive (48.1%) and the BVI-negative (73.9%) and between the LVI-positive (55.4%) and the LVI-negative (82.6%) showed significant differences. 3-year survival rates of group 1, 2, and 3 were 82.5%, 59.7%, and 42.0%, respectively, with significant differences. But multivariate analysis demonstrated that distant metastasis, lymph node metastasis, depth of invasion, age, and gross type served as significant prognostic parameters while BVI and LVI did not. CONCLUSION: Patients with BVI and/or LVI were associated with larger tumor size, infiltrative type tumor, deeper gastric wall invasion, more lymph node metastases, and advanced stages of tumor. BVI and LVI also played significantly adverse influence in the survival time in univariate analysis. With further studies on their roles in clinicopathologic features, lymphovascular invasion would be a useful prognostic factor in gastric cancer.ope