[Historical development of grading of malignant soft tissue tumors]

This article describes the historical development of the grading systems for malignant soft tissue tumors. First attempts to grade these tumors were made in the middle of the nineteenth century; a remarkable amount of activity in grading took place in the 1970s with an apex in the 1980s. Reviewing the literature back to the first available publications, five phases in the development of the grading systems for malignant soft tissue tumors could be distinguished: 1845-1919: phase of identification, 1927-1964: phase of description, 1965-1977: phase of predominant mitotic activity, 1979-1983: phase of predominant tumor type, from 1984: phase of multifactorial systems.