Flow cytometric analysis of the DNA profile of renal cell carcinoma

DNA flow cytometry was applied to one hundred consecutive renal cell carcinomas from years 1974-1979. Single cell suspensions were prepared from paraffin-embedded tissue. From 96 evaluable tumours 34 were considered diploid and 62 aneuploid. Ploidy did not correlate statistically significantly with local growth, venous invasion, nodal or distant metastatic spread, or nuclear grade of renal cell carcinomas. Also the survival of the patients with diploid and aneuploid tumours was not significantly different, but, excluding patients with distant metastases at the time of extrafascial nephrectomy, 83% of the patients with diploid tumour survived for five years, while only 57% of the patients with aneuploid tumour were alive after the same time interval. The difference between survival curves is statistically almost significant (p less than 0.05). The cytologic nuclear grade predicted the prognosis more significantly (p less than 0.01), and the combination of these methods is recommended for the prognostication of renal cell carcinoma.