Computed tomography staging of renal carcinoma

The ability of fast thire-and fourth-generation scanning devices to supply images of sufficient quality to delineate the kidney, its vascular supply, and surrounding fascial envelope has provided a modality which permits preoperative staging of tumors of the kidney with an accuracy of about 90% in limited series of 20 specimen cases. The unreliability of bolus injection to evaluate tumor extension to the renal vein accounted for two errors.