[Renal tumor embolization]

Today the relevance of renal tumor embolization is not determined only by the technical and clinical success of the method. Progress in diagnosis of early stages of renal carcinomas as well as the improvement of both surgical techniques and anesthetic procedures have lead to a change in the selection of patients for embolization. Preoperative embolization of advanced renal cell carcinomas with tumor thrombus into the vena cava or of T4 tumors is now an established clinical procedure. The complete occlusion of the vascular bed of the tumors leads to a considerable reduction in intraoperative blood loss and to simplification of the surgical preparation. By using Ethibloc for embolization, palliation of a hemorrhage or of tumor-related pain in inoperable patients is usually successful. Although local control of the tumor disease, including complete tumor ablation, is achieved by embolization, the median survival rate of our palliatively embolized patients is only 3.5 months. This short life expectancy in the group of inoperable patients has to be acknowledged individually in patients considered for palliative embolization who are free of symptoms related the tumor.