Clinical Significance and Relationship between Microvessel Density and VEGF Expression in Gastric Carcinoma

Objective To evaluate the correlation between microvessel density(MVD) and vascular endothelial growth factor(VEGF) expression in gastric carcinoma and the relationship of MVD and VEGF with clinicopatho- logic characteristics of gastric carcinoma.Methods 27 specimens were embedded with paraffin routingly and five- micrometer thick sections were obtained from it.Detection procedure for MVD,VEGF were performed using immunohistochemistry.Result The average number of MVD were 37.81±10.99(one per eyeshot).The expres- sion of VEGF was found in 59.26% of the specimens.The MVD of the VEGF positive tumors is obviously larger than the VEGF negative tumors.The MVD and VEGF expression has statistic significance with TNM staging and lymph node metastases (P＜0.05),but has no obvious correlation with tumour differentiation degree and serosal invasion.Conclusion The MVD value in gastric carcinoma was closely related with the expression of VEGF and associated with the pathological and clinical stages.Both of them could be used as the useful indexes reflecting the biological behavior of gastric carcinoma.