My thanks to everyone who has responded regarding my question about the
difficulty of detecting large cell lymphoma(B-cell type) by flow. About
half of the respondents replied they were having the same problem(positive
nodes by Surg.. path ,negative by flow cytometry).
Several suggested also trying cytoplasmic staining for Kappa/Lambda along
with cd20 instead of cd19 to detect Bcells( that was also done on our
large cell lymphoma cases with no success in detecting clonality).
Another third suggested that the cells are lost due to their fragile
nature(lost in processing or when run on the instrument due to shear
forces),which I believe is a very good possibility.
Thanks again for your help!
Clinical Flow Lab
Northwestern Memorial Hospital
Chicago ,Ill.