[Morphometric intratumoral microvessel area evaluation could be a useful indicator for coadjuvant therapy in ressected NSCLC].

Objective: To accomplish the tumor vascular area measure and the microvessel count, shown by immunohistochemistry, in non small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) microscopic images, and verify the correlation between these measurements and patients survival.

Design: cross-sectional and observational.

Material And Methods: The material was deriving from 107 NSCLC surgical specimens in Pavilhão Pereira Filho Santa Casa, Porto Alegre. Immunohistochemistry with anti-CD 34 monoclonal antibody (QB-End10; DAKO Corporation) was performed on paraffin-embedded tissue sections. The tumoral vascular area and the microvessel count were obtained by Image Pro Plus 3.0 program.

Results: The 5-year survival rate of high vascular area group (the cut-off was the mean of areas) was 21.7 months +/- 2.5, significantly lower (P < 0.0001) than the low vascular area cases, 38.9 months +/- 3.0. The correlation coefficient between microvessel area and microvessel count was 0.5 (P = 0.001). The tumoral vascular area shown higher correlation to survival (correlation coefficient: 0.48 / P = 0.001) than the tumoral microvessel count (correlation coefficient: 0.2 / P = 0.03). There was not any significant correlation between the microvessel areas and the histological type, the TNM, the lymph nodes status and the clinical staging.

Conclusion: The tumoral vascular area measurement, with computed assistance, can be used as a prognostic marker in NSCLC.