Background: Colorectal carcinoma is the fifth cause of cancer deaths among women and the sixth among men. Aim: To retrospectively analyze the distribution by sex, age, localization and the pathologic features of resected large bowel adenocarcinomas at a surgical service. Materials and methods: All biopsy reports of resected large bowel carcinomas between 1959 and 1995 were analyzed. Twenty five cases (2.5%) had two synchronous tumors and 14 subjects (1.4%) had two different resections due to cancer (metachronic tumors). Sixty percent of tumors were located in the rectum and sigmoid, 74% were well differentiated, 17% poorly differentiated. Mucinous and signet ring cell variants were found in younger subjects and 5.1% and 2.3% of all patients respectively. Eighty four percent of tumors were beyond the muscularis at the moment of resection and 38% had lymph node metastasis. Comparing the 1959-1979 with the 1980-1995 period, the mean age of patients increased from 60 to 65 years old and rectal cancer frequency decreased from 37.8 to 25.4%. Conclusions: Colorectal carcinoma is still diagnosed at an advanced stages and the changes of the natural history of the disease observed in the analyzed periods are similar to those reported in USA and Colombia.