DNA aberrations in urinary bladder cancer detected by flow cytometry and fish: prognostic implications

We evaluated the genetic changes in bladder cancer biopsy by fluorescence in situ hybridization (FISH) and related them to stage and grade of the tumor, ploidy (FCM) and clinical outcome, to determine a simple method to identify tumors with a poorer prognosis. Using FISH the numerical aberrations of chromosomes 1,7,9,17 in tumor’s imprints of 70 patients with transitional cell cancer (TCC) were determined. First of all, the data demonstrated that the sensitivity of FISH in detecting quantitative DNA aberrations exceeds FCM’s sensitivity. The frequency of chromosome 1 and 9 aberrations did not show significant differences in diploid and aneuploid tumors in different stage and grade. On the contrary, the chromosome 7 and 17 aneusomy showed greater differences between pT1 and pT2-3 tumors (p<0.032 and p