Squamous-cell carcinoma of the anus with high intratumoral lymphocytosis and its clinical implications.

Background: It has been claimed that patients with squamous cell carcinoma of the anal canal (SCCAC) showing intraepithelial lymphocytes have a poor prognosis.
Materials and Methods: The histological sections from 277 consecutive SCCAC were reviewed. Cases having a priori a high number of tumoral-intraepithelial lymphocytes (HTIL) were selected. The remaining cases showed only a few to none tumoral-intraepithelial lymphocytes.
Results: Eight patients (all females) representing 3% of the 277 SCCAC had HTIL. All these 8 patients with SCCAC/HTIL had clinical stage II and III while these stages comprised 83% of the remaining SCCAC cases.
Conclusion: Despite the 8 SCCAC/HTIL patients having a more advanced clinical stage than the remaining 269 SCCAC patients, these 8 patients had longer survival. Between 5 and 15 years follow-up, all SCCAC/HTIL patients had survived, whereas during the same time interval 28 (10.4%) of the SCCAC patients without HTIL had died of their tumor.