lymphatic and vascular invasion in SCC tongue v1
Research type
Research Study
Full title
Assessment of lymphatic and true vascular invasion in squamous cell carcinoma of the tongue and its impact on prognosis and treatment outcome.
IRAS ID
241156
Contact name
Andrew Cotterill
Contact email
Sponsor organisation
The Pennine Acute Hospitals NHS Trust
Duration of Study in the UK
0 years, 1 months, 8 days
Research summary
As it stands, the current RCPath reporting criteria for head and neck cancers involves identifying the presence of lymphovascular invasion. The dataset currently does not differentiate between lymphatic vessel invasion and true vascular invasion, and is reported as one (lymphovascular invasion). This is because, they believe it does not make a difference in outcome.
The project is surrounding investigating our reporting method of head and neck (tongue) cases at our lab. Some studies have shown differentiating between the two has resulted in a difference in outcome for the patient i.e those patients that have had lymphatic invasion are more prone to regional metastasis, whereas those that have had true vascular invasion are more prone to distant metastasis.
The aim is to see if the presence of true vascular invasion is associated with higher risk of distant metastasis as oppose to lymphatic invasion which may be associated with regional metastasis.
The method would involve carrying out immnuohistochemical staining on H&N cases (lateral border of tongue) to differentiate between lymphatic vessel invasion and true vascular invasion and investigate patient outcome i.e whether the patient went onto develop local or distant metastasis. This would involve looking at patient case notes.
i intend to access 50 tongue biopsies/resection tissue blocks that have squamous cell carcinoma (SCC) and without lymphovascular invasion and 50 tongue biopsies/resection tissue blocks that have lymphovascular invasion from the archives at The Royal Oldham Hospital (archive storage from 2007-2012), if ethical permission is granted. This number has been decided on the account of tissue availability and to allow enough time (5 years) to follow up patient outcome. All samples will be anonymised as all patients will be given a random number (1-100). This will be recorded alongside the outcome of local/distant mets. At no point will this number be related to the patient.REC name
London - Westminster Research Ethics Committee
REC reference
18/LO/0475
Date of REC Opinion
29 Mar 2018
REC opinion
Favourable Opinion