FAS is a reliable prognostic marker to predict DFS and OS in patients with early breast cancer.

The present study was performed to improve early lung cancer diagnosis in bronchial washing fluid, thereby increasing the diagnostic sensitivity of bronchoscopy by means of high-resolution flow cytometry (FC). We combined dual-parameter DNA/protein FC and conventional cytology in bronchial washing fluid samples from 112 patients with neoplastic and non-neoplastic lung diseases and found 43% of histologically confirmed tumor cases to be cytologically positive; 63% of the tumor samples were aneuploid, 52% of the aneuploid cases were cytologically positive and 48% were negative. In the negative cases, FC was an independent diagnostic factor. In 32% of the cases, FC also failed to detect abnormalities. However, the combination of both techniques increased the sensitivity in detecting neoplastic cells to 73%. Furthermore, simultaneous DNA/protein analysis allowed the recognition of aneuploid cell lines not detectable by single DNA measurement. Identification of aneuploid subpopulations by dual-parameter analysis in cytologically negative one-parameter FC "diploid" samples assumes an important diagnostic value. Dual-parameter DNA/protein FC is a valuable technique that increases the diagnostic yield of bronchoscopy with no risk for the patient and a low additional cost.