Complications of renal cyst exploration versus renal mass aspiration

This report presents a comparison of the complications of surgical exploration with unroofing and renal cyst puncture. Two hundred fifty-five patients were operated on, with a mortality rate of 1 per cent and a morbidity rate of 28 per cent. The complications in 63 patients examined by mass aspiration included a morbidity rate of 6.4 per cent and no mortality. The possibilities of over-looking carcinomas through cyst aspiration are weighed against the demonstrated morbidity of surgical exploration and found to be much less significant. The authors recommend that an asymptomatic renal mass that radiographically appears to be a cyst and is unaccompanied by urine changes or clinical stigmata of renal neoplasia be treated by cyst aspiration and not subjected to surgical exploration.