Clinicopathologic patterns of adult renal tumors in Pakistan

Renal cancer is a serious public health problem which may be under reported and registered in our setup, since the Karachi cancer registry documented only 43 cases out of 4,268 incident cancer cases over 3 year duration. Therefore we aimed to determine the clinicopathologic characteristics of adult renal tumors in our setup.

The study was conducted in histopathology department, Liaquat National Hospital and included total of 68 cases of adult renal tumors over 4 years. Detailed histopathologic characteristics of tumors were analyzed.

Mean age of patients was 56.4 (18-84) years. Renal cell carcinoma (RCC) was the most common cell type (78%) cases; followed by transitional/urothelial carcinoma (12.5%), leiomyosarcoma (4.7%), oncocytoma (1.6%), squamous cell carcinoma (1.6%) and high grade pleomorphic undifferentiated sarcoma (1.6%). Among 50 RCC cases; 62% were conventional/clear cell RCC (CCRCC) type followed by papillary RCC(PRCC), 24%; chromophobe RCC(CRCC), 6% and sarcomatoid RCC(SRCC), 8%. Mean tumor size for RCC was 7.2 cm. Most RCCs were intermediate to high grade (60% and 40% respectively). Capsular invasion, renal sinus invasion, adrenal gland involvement and renal vein invasion was seen in 40%, 18%, 2% and 10% of cases respectively.

We found that RCC presents at an earlier age in our setup compared to Western populations. Tumor size was significantly larger and most of the tumors were of intermediate to high grade. This reflects late presentation of patients after disease progression which necessitates effective measures to be taken in primary care setup to diagnose this disease at an early stage.