Recent studies from Western countries have suggested that BRAF mutations occur in 10–20% of patients with sporadic disease (Jass, 2007; Benvenuti et al, 2007; Di Nicolantonio et al, 2008; Souglakos et al, 2009; Fariña-Sarasqueta et al, 2010), whereas other reports have revealed that tumours harbouring BRAF mutations have different clinical and histopathological features compared with tumours that harbour KRAS mutations (Kim et al, 2006; Deng et al, 2008; Zlobec et al, 2010). Here, KRAS is linked to neoplasm.