Nucleolar morphology in estimation of urinary bladder cancer in man: study on surface contact preparations.

The special feature of nucleolar morphology which reflects the intensity of ribosomal RNA precursor molecule formation and thus also the intensity of proteosynthesis was studied in contact surface preparations from tissue samples of 28 patients with epithelial tumors of the bladder and in tissue samples of bladder mucosa from 16 patients with prostata hypertrophy (7 of them suffered also from cystolithiasis). In malignant lesions of the bladder mucosa, especially in tumors of medium and high grade malignancy, very low values of metabolically resting cells with ring shaped nucleoli and micronucleoli were found.