[Correlation between symptoms and survival in patients with renal cell carcinoma]

To evaluate the correlation between type of presentation in patients with renal cell carcinoma and survival.

Longitudinal retrospective study of 42 patients with clinical and histological diagnosis of renal cell carcinoma (RCC) between July 2002 and September 2007 at University Hospital Manuel Fajardo. The following variables were studied: Sex, age, clinical presentation: 1) asymptomatic: 2) symptomatic: 3) paraneoplastic syndrome; tumor stage (TNM 1997) and survival.

There is a predominance of men over women, the age of greater incidence was between the fifth a and seventh decades. The tumors were classified as: asymptomatic 7%, 3/42; symptomatic 67%, 28/42, with flank pain 31%, 13/42; with hematuria 24%, 10/42, and tumor 10%, 4/42, the classic triad of hematuria, flank pain and mass was 2.3%, 1/42 of the patients and paraneoplastic syndrome 24%, 11/42. The patients with non-metastatic disease were 57%, 24/42 and 43%, 18/42 presented metastases. Five-year survival for patients with RCC by TNM stage was T1, 100% ( 12/12) , T2, 97% (11/12) , T3, 36% (4/11) , T4, 0% (0/7) . The survival of localized and metastatic RCC was 95%, 23/24 and 22%, 4/18 cases respectively and all stage was 64% (27/42).

The asymptomatic RCCs were smaller; pain, hematuria, and mass were the most common manifestations in symptomatic RCC. The prognosis is dismal in patients with RCC showing paraneoplastic syndromes.