Surgical management of advanced adrenocortical carcinoma: a 21-year population-based analysis

Adrenocortical carcinoma (ACC) is a rare endocrine malignancy with a dismal prognosis. When diagnosed in advanced stages of the disease, the outcomes of surgical resection are not well understood. The objective of this study is to determine the impact of surgery in patients with advanced ACC. Using the Surveillance, Epidemiology and End Results database, we identified patients diagnosed with Stage III and IV ACC between 1988 and 2009. A total of 320 patients with Stage III and IV disease were included in our analysis. In patients treated with surgical resection, the Stage III 1- and 5-year survival rates were 77 and 40 per cent, respectively, whereas the Stage IV 1- and 5-year survival rates were 54 and 27.6 per cent, respectively. Patients treated without surgery had poor survival at 1 year for both Stage III (13%) and Stage IV (16%) (P < 0.01 compared with the surgical groups). Lymph node dissection was performed in 26 per cent of the patients with advanced ACC and was associated with improved survival in univariate analysis of Stage IV patients. Overall, our results indicate that favorable survival outcomes can be achieved even in patients with Stage III and IV disease and surgery should be considered in patients with advanced ACC.