METHODS: Tissues were collected from 80 patients with clinically detected prostate cancer and treated with radical prostatectomy. Cases were tested for ERG by immunohistochemistry using the mouse monoclonal antibody EP111. All blocks on 48 cases were tested in order to determine the extent of heterogeneity of ERG expression within individual cases. ERG expression was analysed in relation to patient age, ethnicity and tumour stage and grade.
RESULTS: Forty-six percent of cases were ERG positive. There was no significant association between ERG and tumour grade or stage. Sixty-nine percent of Indian patients had ERG positive tumours; this was significantly higher (p=0.031) than for Chinese (40%) and Malay (44%) patients. Heterogeneity of ERG expression, in which both positive and negative clones were present, was seen in 35% of evaluated cases. Evaluation by tumour foci showed younger patients had more ERG positive tumour foci than older patients (p=0.01). Indian patients were more likely to have the majority of tumour foci with ERG staining positively, compared to either Chinese or Malay patients (P <0.01).
CONCLUSION: In this study, tumour expression of ERG was more likely to occur in patients of Indian ethnicity.
MATERIALS AND METHODS: We retrospectively studied CD56 expression in 54 benign and 54 malignant thyroid lesions using archival formalin fixed paraffin-embedded tissue blocks for the study period from January 2010 to December 2015, diagnosed in a tertiary hospital.
RESULTS: CD56 was expressed in 52/54 (96.3%) of benign specimens and only 24/54 (44.4%) of malignant ones. The malignant specimens comprised 31 (57.4%) papillary thyroid carcinomas (PTC), 11 (20.3%) follicular carcinomas (FC), seven (13%) medullary thyroid carcinomas (MC), one (1.9%) poorly differentiated carcinoma (PC) and four (7.4%) anaplastic carcinomas (AC). CD56 was not expressed in 28/31 (90.3%) of the PTCs, 1/11 (9.1%) FCs, 1/4 (25%) of ACs while all MCs and the PD were positive. The benign group comprised nodular hyperplasias (29/54), lymphocytic thyroiditis (10/54), follicular adenomas (FA) (14/54) and one hyalinising trabecular tumour. CD56 was expressed in all the benign cases except one FA and one nodular hyperplasia. Thirteen of the 14 FAs were CD56 positive. The difference in expression between benign and malignant tumours was statistically significant as the p value was <0.01.
CONCLUSION: CD56 is a potentially good immunohistochemical marker for differentiating papillary thyroid carcinoma from other benign follicular lesions of the thyroid especially in differentiating follicular variant PTC from FA in equivocal cases.
MATERIALS AND METHODS: We retrospectively analysed the histopathological material and data from 82 breast cancer patients diagnosed over a period of four years who underwent intraoperative frozen section evaluation of sentinel lymph nodes.
RESULTS: Frozen section analysis detected metastasis in 13 out of 82 cases and definitive pathological examination on the paraffin section confirmed these positive findings. There was no false positive case (specificity of 100%). The true positive cases comprised seven macrometastases, five micrometastases and one isolated tumour cells. Sampling error was noted in two cases in which the malignant cells were only present in the deeper final paraffin sections (false negative rate of 13.3%). The test sensitivity was 86.7% and the accuracy rate was 97.5%. These findings are comparable to other published data.
CONCLUSION: Intraoperative frozen section analysis is a safe and reliable method for assessment of sentinel lymph node. Knowledge on limitation of frozen section analysis with diligent evaluation of frozen section specimen will be beneficial in reducing interpretation error.
MATERIALS AND METHODS: This was a descriptive, retrospective study of odontogenic tumours diagnosed from January 2007 to December 2014 at this centre. The odontogenic tumours were classified using the 2005 World Health Organization classification system.
RESULTS: Among 2,733 biopsy specimens, 173 cases were diagnosed as odontogenic tumours (6.3%), of which 171 (98.8%) are benign and 2 (1.2%) are malignant. The most frequently encountered tumour was ameloblastoma (n=96, 55.5%), followed by keratocystic odontogenic tumour (KCOT) (n=38, 22.0%) and odontomas (n=16, 9.2%). Malignant tumours accounted for 1.2% of the tumours. Most ameloblastomas and KCOTs affected the mandible preferentially. The mean age was 33.5 (± 17.8) years and 64.7% of patients were in the age group of 10 to 39. Odontogenic tumours were slightly more common in males, with a male to female ratio of 1.4:1.
CONCLUSION: The findings of this study are similar to the other studies in Asia in which the most common tumour encountered is the ameloblastoma, followed by KCOT. The most common signs and symptoms are pain and swelling, while paraesthesia and root resorption are less frequently reported. Such clinical and radiographic features should alert the clinician of a possible odontogenic tumour and though rare, malignant tumours should also be included in the differential diagnoses.
MATERIALS & METHODS: Podoplanin expression was evaluated immunohistochemically in 153 breast cancers. Tumours with ≥ 10% distinct cytoplasmic podoplanin staining in CAFs were considered as positive.
RESULTS: In 65.3% of analysed tumours, podoplanin expression was found positive in CAFs. According to our results, podoplanin positive CAFs correlated significantly with tumour size (p= 0.012), tumour grade (p= 0.032) and cerbB2 score (p= 0.032).
DISCUSSION: Our results suggest that podoplanin expression by CAFs could predict poor patient outcome in breast carcinoma.
METHODS: The study samples comprised 140 subjects aged 18 to 50 years old, natural and unnatural causes of sudden death brought to the Department of Forensic Medicine, Hospital Sungai Buloh (HSgB) and Hospital Sultanah Aminah Johor Bahru (HSAJB) for a period of 12 months. The subjects were categorised into 5 groups: cardiovascular disease (CVD), sudden unexplained death (SUD), thoracic trauma (TT), non-thoracic trauma (NTT) and other diseases (OD).
RESULTS: Median troponin concentration in cases of CVD, SUD, TT, NTT, and OD were 0.51 μg/L, 0.17 μg/L, 0.62 μg/L, 0.90 μg/L and 0.51 μg/L respectively. We found no significant difference of troponin T level in different causes of death (p ≥ 0.05). NTT has the highest median troponin concentration with 0.90 μg/L, SUD possessed the lowest median concentration with 0.17 μg/L.
CONCLUSION: Troponin T is neither specific nor useful as cardiac biomarker for post mortem sample. Therefore, it may not be a useful diagnostic tool at autopsy.