6th ESACP Congress, Heidelberg, April 7-11, 1999

A072
FCM-DNA PLOIDY AND S-PHASE FRACTION ARE USEFULL INDICATORS OF LUNG CANCER RESPONSE TO THERAPIY
Hespanhol V 1, Sansonetty F 2, Amendoeira I 3, Marques A 1

1) Servicio de Pneumologia, Hospital de S. Joao, Porto, 2) Laboratorio de Citometria, IPATIMUP, Porto, 3) Servicio de Anatomia Patologica, Hospital de S.Joao, Porto, Portugal

Presently it is still difficult to determine for an individual patient, with advanced Lung Cancer (LC), which treatment is the most appropriate and to what extent the patient will benefit from it. 93 patients with LC were prospectively studied to evaluate if FCM-DNA Ploidy and S-Phase Fraction (SPF), associated to known clinical and laboratory data, could serve as predictors of the disease response to therapy. FCM data were measured following recent consensus guidelines to analyse fresh frozen samples obtained either by bronchial biopsies or brushings or transthoracic fine needle aspiration. The survival multivariate analysis identified the: performance status (Zubrod) (p=0.000), stage (p=0.001), leukocyte (p=0.000) and lymphocyte (p=0.000) counts, alkaline phosphatase (p=0.039), DNA ploidy (p=0.046) and the SPF (p=0.000) as independent prognostic factors. DNA aneuploidy and a SPF * 15%, were associated with a better prognosis, contrary to that which is referred to in the majority of the literature. The progression analysis identified the performance status (p=0.001), SPF (p=0.011) and total serum proteins (p=0.036), as significant predictors. With these 3 parameters a logistic model was constructed which, when applied to the study population, identified more than 83% of patients whose disease progressed and 82.5% of those who at least stabilised. These results point out the utility of some clinical parameters and DNA ploidy and SPF as prognostic factors and as indicators of disease response to therapy.