Figure 1.

Potential advantages of molecular detection of micrometastases. Metastatic disease, detected by imaging and/or light microscopy, is a feature of high risk (stage 4) neuroblastoma, and an important indicator of poor prognosis. For approximately 10% of children with stage 4 disease, those with limited stage disease (stages 1, 2, and 3), and the rare cases of stage 4s disease with no apparent bone marrow involvement, these methods are suboptimal. For these children, immunocytology or reverse transcriptase polymerase chain reaction may detect clinically significant disease that could improve outcome in several different ways. PBSC, peripheral blood stem cells.