CD44v6 as a Prognostic Factor in Cervical Carcinoma FIGO Stage IB

The aim of our study was to clarify whether CD44v6 evaluation can serve as a universally applicable prognostic factor in patients with FIGO stage IB cervical carcinoma. A retrospective study was performed on 178 FIGO stage IB (142 IB N0, 36 IB N1) radically operated cervical carcinoma patients. The expression of CD44v6 was investigated by immunohistochemistry (IHC). The prognostic significance of established prognostic factors and CD44v6 expression was analyzed by univariate and multivariate analyses. To test the reproducibility and to account for interobserver variability, all specimens were evaluated independently at two institutions. Two different IHC scoring systems, several cut-off levels for CD44v6 positivity and several statistical methods for IHC results evaluation were used. In a univariate analysis, the most significant prognostic factor for overall survival (OS) was lymph node status (p