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In melanoma, immunocytology (IC) after sentinel lymph node disaggregation not only enables better quantification of disseminated cancer cells (DCCs) than routine histopathology (HP) but also provides a unique opportunity to detect, isolate, and analyse these earliest harbingers of metachronous metastasis. Here, we explored lymph node IC in non‐small cell lung cancer (NSCLC). For 122 NSCLC patients, 220 lymph nodes (LNs) were split in half and prepared for IC and HP. When both methods were compared, IC identified 22% positive patients as opposed to 4.5% by HP, revealing a much higher sensitivity of IC (p < 0.001). Assessment of all available 2,952 LNs of the same patients by HP uncovered additional patients escaping detection of lymphatic tumour spread by IC alone, consistent with the concept of skip metastasis. A combined lymph node status of IC and complete HP on a larger cohort of patients outperformed all risk factors in multivariable analysis for prognosis (p < 0.001; RR = 2.290; CI 1.407–3.728). Moreover, isolation of DCCs and single‐cell molecular characterization revealed that (1) LN‐DCCs differ from primary tumours in terms of copy number alterations and selected mutations and (2) critical alterations are acquired during colony formation within LNs. We conclude that LN‐IC in NSCLC patients when combined with HP improves diagnostic precision, has the potential to reduce total workload, and facilitates molecular characterization of lymphatically spread cancer cells, which may become key for the selection and development of novel systemic therapies. © 2022 The Authors. The Journal of Pathology published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of The Pathological Society of Great Britain and Ireland.

Background Several meta-analyses comparing the outcome of awake versus asleep deep brain stimulation procedures could not reveal significant differences concerning the postoperative improvement of motor symptoms. Only rarely information on the procedural details is provided for awake operations and how often somnolence and disorientation occurred, which might hamper the reliability of intraoperative clinical testing. The aim of our study was to investigate possible influencing factors on the occurrence of somnolence and disorientation in awake DBS procedures. Methods We retrospectively analyzed 122 patients with Parkinson's disease having received implantation of a DBS system at our centre. Correlation analyses were performed for the duration of disease prior to surgery, number of microelectrode trajectories, AC-PC-coordinates of the planned target, UPDRS-scores, intraoperative application of sedative drugs, duration of the surgical procedure, perioperative application of apomorphine, and the preoperative L-DOPA equivalence dosage with the occurrence of intraoperative somnolence and disorientation. Results Patients with intraoperative somnolence were significantly older (p=0.039). Increased duration of the DBS procedure (p=0.020), delayed start of the surgery (p=0.049), higher number of MER trajectories (p=0.041), and the patients’ % UPDRS improvement (p=0.046) also correlated with the incidence of intraoperative somnolence. We identified the main contributing factor to intraoperative somnolence as the use of sedative drugs applied during skin incision and burr hole trepanation (p=0.019). Perioperatively applied apomorphine could reduce the occurrence of somnolent phases during the operation (p=0.026). Conclusion Several influencing factors were found to seemingly increase the risk of intraoperative somnolence and disorientation, while the use of sedative drugs seems to be the main contributing factor. We argue that awake DBS procedures should omit the use of sedatives for best clinical outcome. When reporting on awake DBS surgery these factors should be considered and adjusted for, to permit reliable interpretation and comparison of DBS study results.

PurposeNon-skull base meningiomas (NSBM) are a distinct entity and frequently present with focal neurological deficits. This study was designed to analyze functional and oncological outcome following microsurgical tumor resection in patients with NSBM.Patients and methodsAn analysis of 300 patients that underwent NSBM resection between 2003 and 2013 was performed. Assessment measures for functional outcome were Karnofsky Performance Scale (KPS), Medical Research Council - Neurological Performance Scale (MRC-NPS), and improvement rates of focal deficits and seizures. The extent of resection; recurrence-free survival (RFS) and tumor-specific survival (TSS) were also determined.ResultsImpaired KPS and MRC-NPS were present in 73.3% and 45.7%, respectively. Focal neurological deficits were recorded in 123 patients (41.0%), with hemiparesis (21.7%) and aphasia (9.3%) the most prevalent form of impairment. Most meningiomas were localized at the convexity (64.0%), followed by falcine tumors (20.3%). Both KPI and MRC-NPS scores were significantly improved by surgical resection. Postoperative improvement rates of 96.6%, 89.3%, 72.3%, 57.9%, and 27.3% were observed for aphasia, epilepsy, hemiparesis, cranial nerve, and visual field deficits, respectively. Long-term improvement was achieved in 83.2%, 89.3%, 80.0%, 68.4% and 54.6% of patients, respectively. Gross total resection (GTR) over subtotal resection (STR) significantly improved preoperative seizures and visual field deficits and correlated with reduced risk of new postoperative hemiparesis. Poor Simpson grade was the only significant prognostic factor in multivariate analysis for long-term functional deficit, which occurred in 7.3%. Median RFS was 45.9 months (6.0 - 151.5 months), while median TSS was 53.7 months (3.1 – 153.2 months). Both WHO grade (p= 0.001) and Simpson classification (p= 0.014 and p= 0.031) were independent significant prognostic factors for decreased RFS and TSS by multivariate analysis, respectively. Furthermore, tumor diameter &gt; 50 mm (p= 0.039) significantly correlated with decreased TSS in multivariate analysis.ConclusionSurgical resection significantly and stably improves neurological deficits in patients with NSBM.