Purpose: To evaluate prognostic factors for patients with renal cell carcinoma (RCC) who had undergone surgical resection.
Patients and methods: We analyzed data from 371 patients with RCC who had undergone surgical resection. Prognostic factors were identified from clinical and pathological data using univariate and multivariate analysis.
Results: When we analyzed all patients including lymph node metastasis, multivariate analysis showed that only pN factor was an independent prognostic factor. We then analyzed 359 patients without lymph node metastasis, and the presence of symptoms, pT, grade, IFN and venous involvement were considered significant. However, pT (pT1 vs pT2-4), tumor grade and presence of symptom were judged to be independent prognostic factors by multivariate analysis. When the patients were stratified according to the tumor size (2.5, 4, 7 cm), a significant difference in disease specific survival was found by 4 and 7 cm, but not by 2.5 cm.
Conclusions: The current TNM staging accurately predicts patient survival. Tumor grade is also an important prognostic factor for patients with RCC.