her-2/neu overxpression in esophageal squamous cell carcinoma (escc) and its correlation with patient’s clinicopathological features

Background: her-2/neu overexpression has been reported in various human cancers and identified as a significant predictor of poor survival. in this study her-2/neu overexpression and its associations with clinicopathological characteristics were evaluated in patients with esophageal squamous cell carcinoma (escc). methods: this cross-sectional study was performed on 64 patients with histological diagnosis of primary escc who underwent surgery for curative treatment. immunohistochemistry (ihc) was used to assess expression of her-2/neu receptor in formalin-fixed paraffin-embedded tissue blocks. results: the mean age of patients was 60.1_1.28 years. the overall her2 expression was observed in 51.5% of escc patients without considering ihc scores. her2/neu overexpression (6%) was significantly associated with the tumor differentiation (p < 0.001). 20.3% of cases were stage i, 67.2% stage ii, and 12.5% stage iii. 17 patients (26.2%) had vascular invasion, 12 patients (18.8%) had neuronal invasion and 7 patients (10.9%) had invasion to margins. nine of 12 patients with her-2/neu over expression had thoracic tumors and only three of them had an abdominal escc. conclusions: no significant correlations were found between her2/neu overexpression and gender, age, tumor invasion, location of tumor, tnm stages and stage of tumor in patients with escc.