Background & objective: The prognosis of supraglottic squamous cell carcinoma (SGSCC) was poor. To authors' knowledge, the relationship between inducible nitric oxide synthase (iNOS) and basic fibroblast growth factor (bFGF) and the prognosis of SGSCC has not been addressed to date. This study was designed to evaluate the prognostic significance of these two parameters in SGSCC.
Methods: The expression of iNOS and bFGF protein in 64 patients with SGSCC using LSAB method and pathologic imagine analysis system and their association with neck lymph node metastases, recurrence, and prognosis.
Results: (1) The expression of iNOS and bFGF was significantly higher in cervical lymph node positive group (33.2+/-8.8 and 36.1+/-7.8) than in negative group (27.3+/-7.4 and 24.5+/-7.5) with statistical significance. The expression of iNOS and bFGF was higher in recurrence group (36.9+/-1.7 and 34.6+/-2.0) than in no-recurrence group (29.1+/-1.3 and 27.2+/-1.4) with statistical significance. (2) Patients with positive neck lymph node had poorer 5-year survival than those with negative neck lymph node (31.0% vs. 57.1%). Patients with positive iNOS expression had poorer 5-year survival than those with the negative iNOS expression (40.0% vs. 77.8%). However, there was no statistical significance between positive bFGF expression group and negative bFGF expression group. (3) Cox model multivariate regression analysis showed that lymph node status, the expression of iNOS and postoperative radiotherapy were independent prognosis factors, whereas the T staging and the expression of bFGF were not.
Conclusion: The expression of iNOS was one of the independent prognostic factors, but it is necessary to study further for iNOS and bFGF to predict the prognosis of patients with SGSCC using immunohistochemical technique.