Abstract
The prognosis of renal cell carcinoma is one of the worst in the urological area due to the difficulty in its early detection and an immediate metastasis as well as the lack of effective treatment except surgery.
We conducted clinical observations and collected statistics on twenty-three patients who were admitted to the Atami National Hospital in the past eleven years (1975-1986) and were histologically diagnosed as renal cell carcinoma. We also analyzed both clinical and pathological factors relative to the prognosis. The results of this study were summarized as follows.
The observations included sixteen male and seven female patients aged between fortynine and eighty with the average age of sixty-four years old. The actual one-year survival rate was 907%, the three-year 78.9% and the five-year 70, 2%. Among the clinical factors, i. e. sex, clinical symptoms, ESR, α2-globulin and the weight of tumor, only ESR; α2-globulin and weight of tumor were found to be statistically significant factors influencing the prognosis.
As to the pathological factors, we evaluated stageg, rade and cell type. The stage was the only factor influencing prognosis. The survival rate was 75.0% for stage 1, 45.7% for stage 2 and all patients at stage 3 and 4 died within four years. It was clear that the prognosis became worse as the stage advanced.
By grade classification, the five-year survival rate among grade 1 patients was 83.3%, grade 2 33.3% and grade 3 71.4%. Although the survival rate of the grade 2 was markedly low, it was not statistically significant. Consequently we found no clear correlation between the pathological grade classification and the prognosis.
