Immunocytochemical Determination of the Proliferation Fraction in Fine-Needle Aspiration Smears of Breast Tumors and Their Metastases

Since breast carcinomas have a variable clinical course, the search for independent prognostic factors in histological and cytological material is considered highly relevant to prognosis. The lymph node status is the most important, but other factors like the hormonal receptor status and factors concerning proliferation, like the mitotic activity index and the thymidine labelling index, have been shown to be independent prognostic factors as well [1, 5, 7].