Fig. 1.

Flow of patients throughout the study. Medical records were reviewed for 278 consecutive inpatients, all of whom underwent surgical tumor resection with regional lymphadenectomy (dissection of at least the group 1 lymph nodes). In 186 patients with colon cancer with radical resection, fat measurement was evaluated by preoperative MDCT. A total of 92 patients were excluded for the following reasons: palliative surgery (n = 71), emergency surgery for tumor-related complications (hemorrhage, ileus, perforation) (n = 16), any other pathology except adenocarcinoma (n = 3), or double primary cancer (n = 2)