Prognostic significance of granular cell content in renal cell carcinoma

The relation between survival and tumor cell type in renal cell carcinomas was reviewed in 79 cases. The mean follow-up period was 10 years. Tumors were classified into 5 groups according to the percentage of granular cells: group 1, 0-5%; group 2, 6-20%; group 3, 21-40%; group 4, 41-80%, and group 5, over 80%. Half of the patients (50.6%) revealed less than 5% of granular cells, and almost two thirds of the patients (64.64%) had less than 20% of granular cells. Our results showed a lack of correlation between the percentage of granular cell in the tumor and long-term survival (chi 2 p > 0.9 after 10 years). When the data were analyzed in groups of patients with the same clinical stage or nuclear grading, no significant correlation between the percentage of granular cells and long-term survival was found. However, the short-term survival, up to 3 years after diagnosis, was significantly higher for patients with tumors containing less than 20% of granular cells (64.6% in comparison to 46.4% survival for patients with over 20% granular cells; chi 2 p = 0.1). In addition, our data showed a significant correlation between the survival of patients and nuclear grading (chi 2 p < 0.003) as well as the surgical staging of the tumor (chi 2 p < 0.001).