Results
Twenty patients (19 males and 1 female) with mean age of 60.95 ± 9.23
years diagnosed with LSCC were included in the study. 70% of the cases
(14 patients) showed positive membranous expression of EGFR. Notably,
60% of the studied lymph nodes which were regarded as clinically and
radiologically negative revealed to harbor occult metastasis,
micro-metastasis or isolated tumor clusters (ITC) by showing malignant
features and positive expression to EGFR immunohistochemical polyclonal
antibody.
Notable association between T stage of the primary and the presence of
occult metastasis as evidenced with immunohistochemical membranous
expression of EGFR in neck lymph nodes of patients with N0 laryngeal
squamous cell carcinoma (p=<0.001). Also, it was found that
there is a correlation between the tumour grade and the
immunohistochemical expression of EGFR in neck lymph nodes of patients
with laryngeal squamous cell carcinoma (p=0.001) (table 1, figure 1).
In addition, it was found that there is a significant correlation
between the neck nodal metastasis as detected by EGFR
immunohistochemical staining and tumour cartilage invasion (p=0.05),
lymphovascular invasion (p=0.028) & muscle invasion (p=0.05) detected
by histopathological analysis of the total laryngectomy specimen (table
2, figure 1).
Our study showed a remarkable correlation between the laryngeal
expression of EGFR and cervical lymph node metastasis as evidenced by
EGFR immunohistochemical staining (p=0.001), as it was revealed that all
the patients who had cervical node metastasis had positive EGFR
expression in their primaries (table 3, figure 1).