Table 2. Patient and disease characteristics related to the collective used in this study and to the two found clinical relevant clusters.
| Factor | No. of patients (%) collective | No. of patients (%) Cluster 1 | No. of patients (%) Cluster 2 | p-value |
| Total | 87 (100) | 33 (100) | 54 (100) | |
| Age | ||||
| mean | 63 | 63 | 64 | |
| range | 33–82 | 33–82 | 38–80 | 0.514 |
| Gender | ||||
| female | 8 (9) | 2 (6) | 6 (11) | |
| male | 79 (91) | 31 (94) | 48 (89) | 0.513 |
| pT category | ||||
| pT1 | 29 (33) | 14 (42) | 15 (28) | |
| pT2 | 19 (22) | 7 (21) | 12 (22) | |
| pT3 | 39 (45) | 12 (37) | 27 (50) | 0.337 |
| pN category | ||||
| negative | 44 (51) | 26 (79) | 18 (33) | |
| positive | 43 (49) | 7 (21) | 36 (67) | 3.9*10−5 |
| Metastasis | ||||
| cM0 | 79 (91) | 33 (100) | 46 (85) | |
| cM1 | 8 (9) | 0 (0) | 8 (15) | 0.020 |
| Grading | ||||
| G1 | 1 (1) | 1 (3) | 0 (0) | |
| G2 | 41 (47) | 16 (49) | 25 (46) | |
| G3 | 45 (52) | 16 (48) | 29 (54) | 0.414 |
pT category: depth of tumour invasion; pN category: presence of lymph node metastases; cM category: presence of distant metastases at the time of resection (all classification according to UICC). The p-values for cluster comparison using Chi2-test (for age Mann-Whitney U test) are given. Significant differences were found for lymph node and distant metastases status (bold).