Quantitative flow cytometric identification of aberrant T cell clusters in erythrodermic cutaneous T cell lymphoma. Implications for staging and prognosis.

Aims: Assessment of peripheral blood tumour burden for staging of cutaneous T cells lymphoma is most often accomplished by flow cytometry (FC) using various non-standarised strategies. We report the results of calculating absolute Sezary cell counts (SCCs) by FC, based on the identification of aberrant T cell clusters on a virtual 6-dimensional space and independently of the expected immunophenotype (6D-FC SCC).

Methods: 6D-FC SCCs were calculated on 65 peripheral blood specimens from 28 patients with erythrodermic cutaneous T cells lymphoma (stage III or IV).