Expression and significance of microvascular density and vascular endothelial growth factor in lung cancer and their intracranial metastasis

Objective: To study the expression and clinical significance of vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) and microvascular density (MVD) in lung cancer and their intracranial metastasis.Methods: Applying SP immunohistochemical technique, expression of MVD and VEGF were studied in 34 patients with lung cancer and 24 patients with intracranial metastasis. Results: For patients with lung cancer，There're 15 of them with high VEGF expression(44.1%)，19 of them with high MVD expression(55.9%)；for patients with intracranial metastasis，There're 12 of them with high VEGF expression(50%)；13 of them with high MVD expression(54.2%).Both VEGF and MVD in the intracranial matastasis were significantly higher than in lung cancer.Lymph node status and TNM stage were significantly correlated with MVD and the expression of VEGF；age， smoking history and tumor size have no correlation with them.After survival analysis，we found that MVD and VEGF predicated shorter disease-free survival (DFS) and overall survival (OS)；in multivariate analysis，VEGF was an independent predicators for DFS and OS，it was a risk predicator because of their positive statistic value，the higher they express，the shorter survival time for the patients.Conclusion: Both VEGF and MVD are all useful factors in predicting prognosis of patients with lung cancer.VEGF appears to be a strong and independent biologic marker for predicting prognosis of lung cancer patients.