The availability of histologic grading among 5,923 Italian cancer patients and its relationship with survival: a...

The specific goal of the study was to evaluate the availability of the histologic grading of cancer and its effect on survival in an Italian population-based cancer series.

Data were drawn from the Tuscany Cancer Registry, active in central Italy since 1985. Among the cases incident during the period 1985 to 1989, bladder, prostate, colon, corpus uteri, rectum and stomach cancers, for which the proportion of graded cases exceeded 50%, were analyzed. Overall, 5,923 cancer cases were included. Ten-year relative survival rates by grade were computed.

Overall, data on histologic grading was available only for 38% of cases. The sites most frequently graded were urinary bladder (80%), prostate (73%), colon (71%), corpus uteri (69%), rectum (65%) and stomach (56%). For all the cancer sites analyzed, the 10-year relative survival rates increased as the histologic grading improved. The grade distribution resulted related also to the disease extension, more limited the extension higher the proportion of well differentiated cases.

Due to the evidenced importance of histologic grading as a valuable prognostic factor, it should be requested by clinicians and reported by pathologists more frequently than has been done in the area.