Diagnostic utility of CD10 immunohistochemical staining on cellblock in differentiating hepatocellular carcinoma from secondary malignancies of liver

BACKGROUND: Differentiation of hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) from metastatic malignancy in liver may be difficult at times on fine-needle aspiration cytology, especially in case of moderate-to-poorly differentiated tumors. The benefit of cell-block technique is the recognition of histologic pattern of diseases along with application of a wide variety of immunohistochemical (IHC) stains to differentiate hepatic malignancies. In this study, CD10 IHC staining was done on cellblocks prepared from aspirates of clinicoradiologically/cytologically suspected malignant liver neoplasms to differentiate HCC from malignancies metastasizing to liver. OBJECTIVE: The objective of the study was to assess the diagnostic utility of CD10 IHC stain on cell-block preparation for differentiating primary from Secondary malignancies of liver. MATERIALS AND METHODS: Formalin-fixed, paraffin-embedded cellblocks of 61 cases (25 cases of HCC and 36 cases of metastatic carcinoma) were prepared from a fine-needle aspirate of the suspected malignant liver neoplasm and immunostained using monoclonal antibody against CD10. RESULTS: Twenty-two (88%) of 25 cases of HCC were positive for CD10 with a canalicular staining pattern. Two (8%) were positive for CD10 with membranous and one (4%) with cytoplasmic staining pattern. CONCLUSION: CD10 immunostaining on cellblock is useful in discriminating HCC and metastatic carcinoma of the liver with a diagnostic accuracy of 88.52%.