The Role of Tumor Parenchymal and Stromal Ratios in Colorectal Cancer

To evaluate the implications and significant role of parenchymal and stromal ratio in colorectal cancer (CRC).

In our review, we involved English studies from common databases such as Web of Science, Scopus, Google Scholar, PubMed, and the Cochrane Library using the following keywords “colorectal cancer”, “tumor stromal ratio”, “tumor parenchymal ratio”, and “prognostic marker” till December 2023.

The majority of CRC patients are usually diagnosed at late stages, which may lead to missing out on the chance to get radical therapy. Patients with unfavorable prognosis have epithelial malignant tumors with a high amount of stroma, more than 50% stroma, while tumors with a low amount of stroma, less than 50%, and abundant carcinoma tissue have a better prognosis.

Tumor-stromal ratio is a valuable, cheap, and fast modality that provides valuable prognostic data of colorectal carcinoma and other cancers.