[Relevance of histopathologic grading in colonic cancer]

The histopathological grading exerted a significant influence on prognosis in patients with colonic carcinoma. More than half of the well differentiated tumors were found in early stage pT1-3 N0 M0 compared to 25% of the G2- and 10% of the G3-tumors. The percentage of incurable cases in G2-tumors was twice as high and in G3-tumors three times as high as in patients with well differentiated carcinomas. The recurrence rate increased significantly with decreasing tumor differentiation from 21% to 51%. Despite the correlation with tumor stage the histopathological grading could be established as an independent prognostic variable and had an influence on the recurrence rate especially within tumor stage pT1-3 N0 M0.