Immunomorphologic changes in regional lymph nodes associated with cancer.

Morphologic patterns in regional lymph nodes draining resected tumors correlate with in vitro immunologic data and have been reported to predict survival, stage of disease, and presence or absence of metastases. The strength of the relationship between immunomorphologic findings and survival rates varies with the type of tumor, perhaps because of relative immunogenicity, tumor size and growth rate, or even the stimulation of the lymph nodes by infection. Nevertheless, there is remarkable agreement among investigators on key observations, which yield more prognostic information than can be obtained by standard methods.