involves the addition of scores for staining intensity and the proportion of positive cells, which is a departure from the H-score which is based on multiplication of these components and intuitively is more appropriate if staining intensity reflects antigen concentration. The aim of this study was to assess whether a modification of the quickscore to a multiplicative form was valid and could provide an acceptable alternative to the H-score. Two extra categories for the proportion of cells staining positively were also included to permit a completely negative result, and to take into account the presence of very small numbers of positive cells.
MethodsNinety six primary breast cancer surgical specimens, embedded in paraffin wax, were studied. These tumours were taken from a cohort of 119 untreated patients studied previously5 and the oestrogen receptor EIA, using the Abbott H222 antibody, and the oestrogen receptor IHA, using the Dako 1D5 antibody, have been described in detail. The reduction in sample size to 96 tumours was necessary because 17 mismatches had occurred between EIA and IHA pairs of results and in order not to confound the scoring appraisal these mismatches were excluded from this investigation. A further six tumours were excluded because full results were not available.
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