MEDIASTINAL LYMPHOSCINTIGRAPHY REFLECTS CELL-KINETICS OF DEVELOPING MALIGNANT ASCITES

These experiments demonstrate that mediastinal lymphoscintigraphy is a very sensitive and possibly specific indicator for small numbers of i.p. tumour cells. Moreover, it appears that scan conversion can be used to predict in vivo the cell kinetics of developing malignant ascites. Thus, it is possible that lymphoscintigraphy may have special significance in the clinical evaluation of patients with ovarian cancer not only as a diagnostic test for early peritoneal dissemination (Ege and Bronskill, 1978) but also as a marker for assessing the kinetics of tumour cell division and the response of treatment.