Lymphatic vessel density in correlation to lymph node metastasis in head and neck squamous cell carcinoma

In head and neck squamous cell carcinoma (HNSCC), metastatic dissemination to regional lymph nodes serves as a major prognostic indicator for incipient disease progression and constitutes the guideline for subsequent therapeutic strategies. In this study, whether intratumoral (IT) and peritumoral (PT) lymphatic vessel density (LVD) might be a predictive indicator to the risk of lymph node metastasis was investigated.Tumour lymph vessels in fresh frozen sections of 105 head and neck cancer were quantified by immunostaining for the lymphatic endothelial marker LYVE-1. These results underwent correlation with the nodal status of the patient.There was a significant relationship between a high IT LVD and nodal metastasis (N+) (p=0.049, Mann-Whitney test). Analysed separately by anatomic regions, a significant correlation was only shown in oral carcinoma (p=0.032, Mann-Whitney test). Intratumoral LVD was lower compared to peritumoral LVD. Logistic regression, however, showed that the only predictive parameter for the nodal status was the localisation of the primary tumour but not LVD.This study confirmed that IT LVD is low in HNSCC. In this group of tumours there was a significant correlation between IT LVD and nodal involvement.