The Effect of Calretinin Immunostaining as Adjunctive to Hematoxylin and Eosin in Improving Diagnosis of Hirschsprung Disease

Abstract

Hirschsprung's disease (HD) is a congenital intestinal motility disorder with absence of ganglion cells in the colonic wall. Hirschsprung’s disease is a congenital multigenetic disorder which pathogenesis is not yet fully understood. The condition is a diagnostic and therapeutic challenge because undiagnosed or improperly treated cases suffer significant morbidity that can lead to death. Diagnosis of the disease is mainly based on the identification of the lack of ganglion cells in the pathology sections of the colon which is very difficult and time consuming and also needs several serials cut sections. There are many proposed markers in this field in the literature but none of them has been satisfactory. Calretinin immunohistochemistry (IHC) has been introduced as a diagnostic marker to overcome the problems in diagnosis of this disease about 10 years ago. However, there are few studies regarding the benefits and pitfalls of this marker.