Table 2.

The correct prediction (denoted by +) and incorrect prediction (denoted by −) of various clinical characteristics of encapsulated tumours with varying hypotheses (the expansive growth hypothesis, foreign body hypothesis, and acid-invasion hypothesis). If a hypothesis does not generate any prediction it is denoted by a question mark. Clinical predictions taken from (Ng et al., 1992, Ros et al., 1990, Lockwood et al., 2003, Gulubova, 1997).

	Expansive Growth	Hypothesis Foreign Body	Acid Invasion
Characteristic
Low invasion	+	+	+
Presence not correlated with tumour size	−	+	+
Capsule thickness not correlated with tumour size	−	+	+
Increased numbers of myofibroblasts in stroma	−	+	−
Inflammatory infiltrate mild	+	?	+
Some very small tumours have very thick capsules	−	+	+
Capsule not associated with increase in peritumoural fibrosis	+	−	+
Dense matrix in capsule (observation of Gulubova (1997))	+	+	−
Absence of dense matrix in capsule (observation of Lockwood et al. (2003))	−	−	+