Several lines of evidence indicate that neutrophils act nonspecifically against tumor cells. The correlation between tumor-infiltrating neutrophils (TINs) and clinicopathological features remains unclear and deserves to be investigated. To analyze the prognostic influence of TINs in gastric carcinoma, the authors selected 273 patients with advanced gastric carcinoma who underwent gastrectomy at Cremona Hospital (Lombardia, Italy) between 1990 and 1995 and followed them for a period of 5 years. The number of TINs was assessed in a semiquantitative manner using the mean value of 20 nonoverlapping high-power fields (magnification, 400x; 0.08 mm(2)). The patients were divided into two groups: patients with a moderate or extensive amount of TINs (n = 76; >10 TINs per 20 high-power fields) and patients with a minor amount of TINs (n = 197;

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