Role of AgNORs in diagnosis of early malignant lesions of gall bladder.

Sections from eighty nine specimens of gall bladder including 40 cases of chronic cholecystitis, 9 dysplasia 15 well differentiated adenocarcinoma, 14 moderately differentiated adenocarcinoma and 11 poorly differentiated adenocarcinomas were studied for argyrophilic nucleolar organizer regions (AgNOR's). The difference between mean +/- SD NOR counts of chronic cholecystitis (1.97 +/- 0.28), dysplasia (5.6 +/- 0.88) well differentiated adenocarcinoma (7.2 +/- 0.30) and moderately differentiated adenocarcinoma (8.0 +/- 0.63) was statistically significant (p < 0.001). NOR counts of poorly differentiated adenocarcinoma (8.5 +/- 0.78) were higher than moderately differentiated carcinoma but the difference was not statistically significant. Despite the significant difference in the mean values, a considerable overlap in the NOR counts of individual cases of different groups was observed suggesting that though NOR counts can not act as a specific diagnostic parameter for diagnosis of early carcinoma and dysplasia in isolated cases, they may prove to be a good adjunct to already existing parameters like imaging techniques or cytology.