1987 Volume 78 Issue 11 Pages 1933-1939
Since January 1979, we have been using abdominal ultrasonography for screening in all patients with abdominal diseases. Twenty-five cases of renal cell carcinoma out of the 41, 983 screened patients were discovered by abdominal ultrasonography in the past eight years.
The classic symptoms such as hematuria, abdominal mass and flank pain were observed as chief complaints at the time of ultrasonographical examination in eight cases. In twelve cases, nonurologic symptoms were chief complaints at the time of the ultrasonographical examination. An ultrasonographical examination performed in the routine health check-up incidentally revealed renal tumor in five cases and all of them had no symptoms. The tumors of these five cases were smaller than those of the other cases and these five cases were in low stages and had good prognosis. Hematuria was not seen in 18 (72%) out of the 25 cases and 3 cases (12%) revealed no abnormality on intravenous pyelogram. These facts suggest that ultrasonography might be helpful in early detection of renal cell carcinoma.
At present, early detection followed by radical surgery is the best treatment for renal cell carcinoma, since there is no better nonsurgical therapy. For early diagnosis of renal cell carcinoma, our data showed that the use of ultrasonography in the screening of abdominal diseases at the routine health check-up was extremely important in addition to paying attention to nonurologic symptoms which were observed in some cases of renal cell carcinoma.
