1985 Volume 76 Issue 8 Pages 1154-1160
The renal cell carcinoma is usually not considered to be radiosensitive. But, uncertainty exists at the present time about the place of irradiation in the treatment of renal cell carcinoma. In order to study the sensitivity of renal cell carcinoma to irradiation, the case records were examined of 162 patients who had attended The Jikei University Hospital between January 1957 and December 1980 inclusive. Seventeen case records were rejected because of incomplete or inadequate information. The remaining 145 case records were available for study. Of the 145 nephrected patients, 58 (Group I) were irradiated and 87 (Group II) were not.
The survival rates of these two groups were almost the same. Of these irradiated patients (Group I), 20 were treated by chemotherapy, but there was no difference to the irradiated patients with respect to survival.
With regard to the stage and the grade of the tumor in the irradiated and non irradiated groups, further survival analysis were made. Comparison of these two groups showed no difference as to survival rate in each stage and each grade.
Of the irradiated patients, 18 were treated by pre-operative irradiation, 32 were treated by postoperative irradiation, and 8 were treated by pre-operative plus post-operative irradiation. Comparision of the these groups showed that the post-operative irradiated patients were in lower stages and lower grades and had good prognosis. There was little difference in survival rate between the group of preoperative patients and the group of pre-operative plus post-operative patients.
Comparison of the occurence rate of distant metastasis between the irradiated group and non irradiated group revealed no difference.
The aim of this study was to investigate whether irradiation made any difference in the outlook of this series of patients with renal cell carcinoma. A slightly better survival rate was slown by the postoperative irradiation group. However, no improvement of survival attrivutable to irradiation was observed in any group.
