Evaluation of prognostic factors and PCNA expression for pulmonary metastatic tumors of colorectal carcinoma.

The present study was conducted to evaluate clinicopathologically 26 patients whose primary colorectal carcinoma and resulting pulmonary metastatic tumors had been resected, and to determine the relationship between tumor progress and prognosis by PCNA immunostaining. Patients with solitary pulmonary metastasis were found to have much better prognoses than those with multiple metastasis. There was no correlation between tumor size of pulmonary metastasis and prognosis. Survival rates of patients with disease-free intervals (DFIs) of 2 years or longer were higher than for those with DFIs of less than 2 years. Mean PCNA expression of pulmonary metastatic lesions was significantly higher than that of primary lesions. It was suggested that the higher PCNA expression stemming from the relation between depth of tumor invasion and PCNA expression was greater with tumor progress.