© 2004 BMJ Publishing Group Ltd & Association of Clinical Pathologists
EDITORIAL
Minimal metastatic disease in neuroblastoma
Minimal metastatic disease
Correspondence to:
Correspondence to:
Dr M M Reid
Department of Haematology, Royal Victoria Infirmary, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE1 4LP, UK; Micheal.Reid@nuth.northy.nhs.uk
Clinical importance in neuroblastoma
Keywords: micrometastases; neuroblastoma; clinical significance; minimal residual disease; immunocytology; reverse transcriptase polymerase chain reaction
| The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below. |
The article by Burchill1 in this issue casts light on major technical advances in our ability to detect ever smaller numbers of neuroblastoma cells in the peripheral blood and bone marrow of children with this disease. But what of the question posed in its title—is this clinically important? Intuitively, the answer would seem to be "yes, at least in some children". The subject—detection of minimal quantities of tumour—and the technology are exciting; both are very "sexy". However, the protracted and significantly less "sexy" process of answering that question in a meaningful way still remains. In which children, at what stage of treatment, using what discriminating threshold of tumour cells, detected in what tissue will these approaches accurately forecast outcome? Will that forecast be significantly more accurate than can currently be achieved by conventional staging or biological features? And, finally, will intervention in specific groups of
CiteULike 
Complore 
Connotea 
Del.icio.us 
Digg 
Reddit 
Technorati What's this?
- Full Text
- Full Text (PDF)
- Submit a response
- Alert me when this article is cited
- Alert me when eLetters are posted
- Alert me if a correction is posted
Services
- Email this link to a friend
- Similar articles in this journal
- Similar articles in PubMed
- Add article to my folders
- Download to citation manager
- Request Permissions
Citing Articles
Google Scholar
PubMed
Topic Collections
Bookmark with
Register for free content
The full back archive is now available for all BMJ Journals. Institutional subscribers may access the entire archive as part of their subscription. Personal subscribers will also have access to all content when logged in. Non-subscribers who register have free access to all articles published before 2006 right back to volume 1 issue 1. Register here to access the free archive of all BMJ Journals.
Don't forget to sign up for content alerts so you keep up to date with all the articles as they are published.
