Results ResultsResults Results: The mean follow-up time was 41.9 months. Hemizygous deletion was detected in 18 patients (33.9%), while the homozygous one was present in three (5.6%). Deletion was present in approximately 40% of the analyzed cases. Monosomy and trisomy were detected in nine (17%) and two patients (3.8%), respectively. In 21 patients (39.6%) the analysis of the PTEN gene by in situ hybridization was normal. There were no statistically significant differences in overall (p = 0.468) and disease-free (p = 0.344) survival rates between patients with or without deletion. Factors which were independent for overall survival: TNM clinical stage, symptoms at diagnosis, high Fuhrmann grade, performance status (ECoG) and tumor recurrence. . Despite the increase in diagnosis of smaller, asymptomatic renal tumors, nearly 30% of patients have metastases at diagnosis and other 30% will develop metastases during the course of the disease, even when it is localized [1][2][3][4] . Biomolecular factors have been studied to aid in clinical and pathological staging, identifying different genes and proteins capable of predicting the risk of progression or death by the disease and identify patients who may have a better response to treatment 3 . Among the genes studied, PTEN (phosphatase with tensin homology deleted in chromosome 10) is a tumor suppressor gene located on chromosome 10q23 and may be inactivated due to mutations and deletions, these being found in various solid malignancies 2. In RCC, a deletion or mutation of PTEN, as well as its immunohistochemistry low expression, are associated with the invasive and metastatic phenotype of tumor 2,[4][5][6][7][8] . The aim of this study was to analyze the PTEN gene via tissue microarray (TMA) by the technique of fluorescence in situ hybridization (FISH), determining the frequency of deletion and its impact on the rates of overall and disease free survival.
METHODS
METHODS METHODS METHODS METHODSWe retrospectively analyzed 53 patients with renal cell carcinoma, metastatic or not at diagnosis, and subjected to surgical treatment between 1980 and 2007. The research of fluorescent in situ hybridization (FISH) of the PTEN gene was initially performed in specimens from 110 patients, which had been submitted to TMA, but only in 53 samples (48.2%) it was possible to perform the proposed reaction. The 53 tumors designated by their corresponding registration pathology report numbers, previously selected and classified, were included in the construction of a TMA receptor paraffin block (Beecher Instruments, Silver Spring, MD) from samples of the original donor block, with 1mm diameter needle (TMArrayer punch MP10-1.0mm) after the previous choice and marking of the neoplasm representative area from the original hematoxylin and eosin slide.We performed punctures in duplicate (two fragments each case) of the donor and receptor paraffin blocks, thus containing two different areas of the tumor in each case. Histological sections with 3 to 4 ìm thickness of the receptor paraffin bloc...
