Table 2. Results of univariate analysis for overall survival and relative survival (qualitative data categorised as in Table 1).

	Overall survival		Relative survival
Variables	χ 2	P-value	χ 2	P-value
Sex	0.181	0.6705	21.408	<0.0001
Age	18.379	<0.0001	23.354	<0.0001
Tumour site	0.991	0.3194	0.780	0.3772
Tumour shape	2.680	0.1016	2.179	0.1399
Tumour size	0.843	0.3587	0.209	0.6477
Depth of involvement	22.834	<0.0001	14.782	0.0001
Histological grading	4.053	0.0441	4.885	0.0271
Angioinvasion	1.660	0.1977	1.582	0.2084
Lymphoinvasion	15.258	<0.0001	16.018	<0.0001
Neuroinvasion	3.725	0.0536	4.865	0.0274
Lymphocyte infiltration	0.185	0.6675	0.002	0.9912
Regional node involvement	108.770	<0.0001	82.777	<0.0001
Distant node involvement	4.394	0.0361	5.348	0.0207
Presence of liver metastases	73.541	<0.0001	63.179	<0.0001
Number of liver metastases	73.754	<0.0001	54.246	<0.0001
Extrahepatic metastases	35.407	<0.0001	27.350	<0.0001
Haemoglobin	1.261	0.2614	0.009	0.9261
Serum albumin	0.825	0.3636	0.734	0.3915
Serum CEA	10.965	0.0009	14.263	0.0002
Serum CA19-9	12.808	0.0003	23.058	<0.0001
Dukes' stages	121.595	<0.0001	96.964	<0.0001
MAC stages	111.716	<0.0001	87.425	<0.0001
TNM stages	120.418	<0.0001	95.893	<0.0001

CA19-9=carbohydrate antigen 19-9; CEA=carcinoembryonic antigen.