[Clinical and histological prognostic factors of renal cancer with caval thrombus]

The objective of this study was to determine the clinical and histological factors influencing survival of patients with renal cancer and caval thrombus.

The clinical and pathological data of 46 patients operated for renal cancer with caval thrombus were reviewed. The following prognostic factors were studied: tumour stage and grade, tumour diameter, invasion of the perirenal fat or adrenal gland, presence of lymph node involvement or distant metastases, level of the thrombus, invasion of the wall of the vena cava, partial or complete nature of the resection. Survival was determined by the Kaplan-Meier method and multivariate analysis was performed with the Cox test.

The study population comprised 30 males and 16 females with a mean age of 64.4 years. The mean tumour diameter was 10.6 cm. Twelve thrombi were perirenal (26.1%), 15 were infrahepatic (32.6%), 12 were retrohepatic (26.1%), and 7 were supradiaphragmatic (15.2%). Forty four tumours were stage T3 and 2 were stage T4. Fifteen tumours were N1-2 or M1 (32.6%). The median disease-specific survival was 22 months and the 5-year survival rate was 25%. On univariate analysis, complete resection, lymph node invasion and metastases and adrenal gland invasion had an impact on survival. On multivariate analysis, only the presence of metastases had an independent prognostic value.

This study confirms the prognostic value of certain factors (lymph node invasion and metastases, complete tumour resection) and raises the question of the prognostic significance of adrenal gland invasion. On the basis of these data, the authors recommend that surgery should only be performed in patients with a good general status, without metastases and in whom complete resection of the tumour mass appears to be possible.