Evaluation of the value of intratumoral mast cell count in differential diagnosis of uterine smooth muscle neoplasms

Introduction:Uterine smooth muscle tumors are among the most common human tumors, and based onacademic criteria for diagnosis of malignant from benign types; sometimes this separation isso difficult. We proposed a new method, intratumoral mast cell count by using toluidine bluestaining, to facilitate this differentiation.Material and methods:All pathology reports in a nine year period were reviewd from archive of pathologydepartment of Motahari hospital,Urmia and all reported uterine smooth muscle tumor wereextracted.Because total number of other tumor types than leiomyoma were 38,so 38 cases ofleiomyomas were selected.Paraffin blocks were cut to 4 μm thicksections and stained withH&E as well as toluidine blue,and mast cells were counted in toluidine blue stained slides in10 high power fields.Results:Our study showed that median of intratumoral mast cell count are quite different betweensmooth muscle tumor types (leiomyoma, cellular leiomyoma, smooth muscle tumor ofundetermined malignant potential (STUMP), and leiomyosarcoma), mean27.7,16.2,68.6and0.4respectively.Conclusion:due to significant overlap, this method must not be used as a sole criteria for differentialdiagnosis among various types of uterine smooth muscle tumors, although this criteriabesides other documented ones, is a good, helpful and easy supplementary diagnosticmethod.

کلیدواژه ها:

mast cell ، leiomyoma ، leiomyosarcoma ، STUMP