[Sarcomatoid renal cell carcinoma. A rare and aggressive variation of primary renal cell carcinoma]

Every year, renal cell carcinoma (RCC) is responsible for the highest proportion of cancer-associated deaths in relation to all other malignant urological diseases. Initially called carcinosarcoma, the sarcomatoid differentiation confers higher aggressiveness on any of the different subtypes of RCC, with a frequency of ca. 1%. The presence of a sarcomatoid component makes the disease locally aggressive, which typically presents an advanced grade that is associated with fast progression and fatal outcome in a vast proportion of cases, with median survival lower than 1 year. This is important for predicting the outcome for patients undergoing nephrectomy due to RCC, since chemotherapy in a certain group of patients with progressive disease can be a reasonable alternative to the failure of immunotherapy in sarcomatoid renal carcinoma. We report our experience with sarcomatoid RCC in four patients with extensive tumor progression in comparison to the literature.