Renal tumors in postmortem material

Renal tumors include several categories, the most frequent being clear cell renal cell carcinoma, papillary renal cell carcinoma, chromophobe carcinoma, oncocytoma, adenoma and angiomyolipoma. The aim of the study was to analyze the incidence of renal tumors in autopsy material. Among 3512 autopsies performed in our institution in the last decade, we found 97 post mortem examinations in which 108 renal tumors were detected. The most frequent diagnosis was adenoma (53 cases, 49.1%) and, among cancers, clear cell carcinoma (20 cases, 21.1%) followed by papillary carcinoma (17 cases, 15.5%). Less frequent lesions were angiomyolipoma (4 cases), oncocytoma (4 cases), unclassified renal cell carcinoma (3 cases), medullary fibroma (5 cases) leiomyoma (1 case) and urothelial carcinoma (1 case). The adenomas were significantly more frequent in cases of kidneys with chronic fibrosis. When comparing the present series to surgical material from a similar period, of note is that 44% of renal carcinomas in the autopsy series were papillary, but only 9.4% were papillary in the surgical material.