Renal cell carcinoma in children: a single institution's experience

Seven patients with renal cell carcinomas (RCC) were treated at the Department of Pediatric Oncology in Prague over a period of 15 years. The average age at diagnosis was 8 years 9 months. Histology review showed five tumors to be of clear cell type with mixed tubular, papillary, and solid patterns; one tumor was purely papillary eosinophilic type and one was composed of clear and eosinophilic cells. Five patients received chemotherapy and four of them also received radiotherapy. Four patients are without evidence of disease with a minimal follow-up period of 2 years. These four were all clinical stage I or II. Two stage III patients died of metastatic disease. One patient died of tumor emboli to the lungs at operation. Tumor diagnosis and treatment of the patients in the lower clinical stages seem to have a favorable prognostic impact in childhood RCC. Combined chemotherapy with vinblastine as one of the agents, and possibly additional immunotherapy, appears to have promising results, although the number of patients treated thus far is limited.