Ultrastructural observation on hepatocellular carcinoma

In 31 cases of hepatocellular carcinoma, electron microscopic observation and morphometry on the cell organelles were carried out to evaluate the usefulness of electron microscopy for the diagnosis of well differentiated hepatocellular carcinoma. The cell organelles in well differentiated tumor cells were very similar to those in normal hepatocytes or hepatocytes with liver cirrhosis (LC). We found that in poorly differentiated tumor cells, the nuclear area, N/C ratio, nucleolar area, the amount of dispersed chromatin, and the number of free ribosomes had increased, but the cellular area, degree of nuclear roundness, and mitochondrial area had decreased. These results seem to indicate that electron microscopy is not as useful as light microscopy in the diagnosis of well differentiated hepatocellular carcinoma, but is useful in the study of poorly differentiated tumor cells, which indicated that the cell proliferation through mitoses was activated.