Klin Onkol 2003; 16(5): 211-218.
Abstract: The metastasis occurence very negatively affects prognosis of solid tumor patients. However, current imaging techniques do not have sufficient resolution for detection of early stages of metastatic process. Along with recent development of new molecular-biological methods, the attention has been focused on early diagnosis of tumor cells dissemination. These techniques make possible to distinguish single tumor cell among on order of 104-106 healthy cells and thereby they can contribute to earlier catchment of metastase formation. Special attention is dedicated to micrometastasis determination by detection of cytokeratin 19 and 20 mRNA in breast and colorectal carcinoma by reverse transcriptase polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR). This method is able to find out the presence of tumor cells in peripheral blood, lymphatic nodes or biopsies in high percentage of patients with malignant tumor. However, real contribution of assessment of isolated tumor cells and micrometastases for clinical practice has not been clarified up to the present day. There will be needed next studies to define applicability of these methods for determination of further patient treatment.
