Percutaneous biopsy of small renal mass: can diagnostic accuracy be affected by hospital volume?

High diagnostic performance and low morbidity for renal tumor biopsy (RTB) have been described in highly experienced centers. Here we present the five-year experience of our institute in performing RTB. The protocol used, the safety profile and the diagnostic accuracy obtained were analyzed.

The study is a retrospective single-institution clinical data review of 84 consecutive RTB of small renal masses. Post-biopsy complications were reported using the Clavien-Dindo system. To measure the concordance between biopsy and nephrectomy specimens regarding histological subtype and International Society of Urological Pathology/World Health Organization (ISUP/WHO) renal cell carcinoma grade, the kappa coefficient of Cohen was used.

Median (IQR) follow-up time was 44 (29-58) months. In total, 94% of RTB procedures were free of complications; when complications did occur, 80% were grade I and 20% were grade II. No cases of tumor seeding were observed. Combining the first and repeated biopsies the overall diagnostic rate was 85.8%. Overall, 79.1% of diagnostic RTB were malignant. In 42 surgically treated patients, the concordance between the histological results of biopsies and surgical specimens was very good for histological subtypes (k = 0.87) and moderate for tumor grade (k = 0.51).

RTB resulted in a high safety profile. The overall diagnostic rate was 85% and an unnecessary intervention was avoided in 21% of patients. RTB showed a very good accuracy in determining the histological subtype of renal cancer while it was moderate for the tumor grade. These results are similar to those reported in larger series and support feasibility of this procedure in low-volume centers.