FIGURES AND TABLES

Figure 1.

Detection of numerical chromosomal anomalies in pleural effusion cells from a patient with advanced non-small-cell lung cancer. Within a dense reactive cellular background, at least four tumour cells with marked aneuploidy can be recognised. A tumour cell with six copies of chromosome 11 (green) and four copies of chromosome 17 (orange) is marked by the large arrow. As internal control, the leukocyte (small arrow) exhibits a 2/2 signal pattern.

Table 1 - Origin of effusions, underlying malignancies and number of effusions representing first manifestation of disease or of relapse.

Table 2 - Definition of criteria which enabled the diagnosis of tumour-associated aneuploidy by FISH in a two-step microscopic evaluation of effusion specimens.

Table 3 - Cutoff threshold levels for background aneusomy (percentage) for the six chromosomes examined in series 1 (1994–1998).

Table 4 - Diagnostic sensitivities of cytology, FISH, and the combination of both (cyto&FISH) in the whole series of effusions and major tumour entities (with 10 effusions per tumour entity available).