Expression and clinical significance of epidermal growth factor receptor and vascular endothelial growth factor in non-small cell lung cancer

Objective To observe the expression of epidermal growth factor receptor(EGFR) and vascular endothelial growth factor(VEGF) in non-small cell lung cancer(NSCLC) and correlated with clinicopathologic parameters.Methods HE staining of paraffin sections was used to study lymph node metastatic status.Immunohistochemistry of tissue sections was used to study the expression of EGFR and VEGF in seventy-six NSCLC tissues and 14 cases of normal lung samples.Results The positive rates of EGFR and VEGF in 76 NSCLC samples were obviously higher than those in the 14 normal lung samples(47.4% vs.7.14% for EGFR,51.3% vs.7.14% for VEGF,P 0.05).The positive rate of EGFR with stage Ⅲ was higher than that with stage Ⅰ/Ⅱ(56.8% vs.31.3%,P 0.05).The positive rate of VEGF with lymph node metastasis was higher than that without lymph node metastasis(77.8% vs.27.5%,P =0.000).EGFR and VEGF expression was not statistically correlated with each other.Conclusion EGFR and VEGF were overexpressed in NSCLC tissues.The expression of EGFR in NSCLC was correlated with TNM stages.The expression of VEGF in NSCLC was correlated with lymph node metastasis.The expression of EGFR was not correlated with VEGF expression in NSCLC tissues.