DEVELOPMENT OF THE HUMAN COLONIC ADENOCARCINOMA FROM ADENOMA AS A HISTOPATHOLOGICALLY CONTINUOUS PROCESS

The adenomacarcinoma sequence of the human colon is usually divided in to three separate steps according to the grade of epithelial dysplasia , i.e., adenomas with mild, moderate and severe dysplasia. In an attem pt to re-examine whether or not this sequence can be morphologically s eparable as usually assumed, a total of 192 epithelial lesions includi ng adenomas with various grades of dysplasia were analyzed, relying on morphometrical and multivariate-statistical techniques. Histologic fe atures of epithelial lesions were characterized by 10 quantitative par ameters and subjected to 10-variate cluster analysis. In the result of computations, separation of neoplastic lesions into different groups proved to be rather ambiguous, not justifying the classification into three groups as generally expected, It was concluded that adenocarcino ma can develop from adenoma as a seemingly continuous process which ma y involve more steps than usually assumed.