Prognostic Validity of AgNOR in Pleomorphic Adenoma

Since the argyrophilic nucleolar organizer region (AgNOR) technique has successfully distinguished various grades of malignancies and enabled prognostic assessment, this paper traces its prognostic validity in predicting the behavior of pleomorphic adenoma (PA). Ten cases of recurrent PAs were compared, on the one hand, where AgNOR score of area fraction was measured before and after recurrence. The same findings were contrasted to ten cases of normal glandular mucosa. Diagnosing both pleomorphic adenomas was based on clinical and histological records of the archival submitted cases. The data were statistically analyzed by t-test, ANOVA, Tukey and Pearson's tests. The study concludes that AgNOR score lack the prognostic validity on testing PA, in terms of distinguishing and or predicting recurrence.