Grading as a prognostic factor: review of 209 primary gastric cancer patients.

Two hundred and nine cases of primary gastric cancer were treated surgically from January 1968 to December 1983 and analyzed retrospectively. All patients were followed up for a minimum of 5 years. There were 25 SI cases (12%), 22 SII (10.5%), 55 SIII (26.3%) and 107 SIV (51.2%). Tumor grade according to Broders classification showed 50 cases of G1 lesions (23.9%), 44 G2 (21.1%) and 115 G3 (55%). Patients with well differentiated G1 lesion, compared to G2-G3 patients, presented a greater incidence of T1-T2 tumors and decreased incidence of T4 tumors (p less than 0.05). The lymph node involvement rate significantly increased with variation of T (p less than 0.001) but not with tumor grade. Survival results correlated with tumor stage (p less than 0.01) but not with tumor grade or histological type.