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Venous renal tumor extension: a prospective US evaluation
Abstract:
To evaluate the ability of ultrasonography (US) to determine venous tumor extension, we studied 120 consecutive patients with renal neoplasms. The incidence of renal vein involvement in this group was 18%; caval tumor extension occurred in 11% of the patients. Real-time US clearly visualized the entire retrohepatic inferior vena cava (IVC) in 96% of the examinations, and the ipsilateral renal vein was well seen on 88% of the scans. Of the caval sonograms that could be evaluated (115/120), intravascular tumor thrombi were detected in all 13 cases (sensitivity and specificity = 100%). Of the assessable sonograms of the renal vein (105/120), tumor invasion was identified by US in 21 of 22 cases (sensitivity = 95.5%, specificity = 100%). Venous tumor involvement was seen with intravascular lesions of different echogenicity, which caused a neoplastic-induced renal or caval vein enlargement in most cases. Our findings show that US is of great value in the preoperative assessment of intravascular tumor extension and provides a useful alternative to inferior venacavography.