Renal Cell Carcinoma in Dialysis Patients with End Stage Renal Disease: Focus on Surgery and Pathology

In 1977, Dunnill et al. from Oxford at first reported that 14 of 30 dialysis patients with end stage renal disease (ESRD) examined at autopsy had acquired cystic disease of the kidney (ACDK) and that six of these 14 patients had renal cell carcinoma (RCC), including one with distant RCC metastatsis.1 It is now well established that patients with ESRD are more prone to RCCs with an incidence of approximately 3 to 5 %.2-5 These studies may misrepresent the true incidence RCC because they primarily relay upon screening radiology, particularly ultrasonography (US), for detection. Better estimate was provided by a single-center study in which most renal transplant patients undergo ipsilateral native nephrectomy at surgery. Based upon strict pathologic criteria reported by Denton et al., prevalence of ACDK, renal adenoma and RCC and oncocytoma were found in 33%, 14%, 4.2% and 0.6% of 260 patients6, which may be lower than the true incidence given that only one kidney was removed. Chen et al. found higher incidence of RCCs vs. the general population, with a standardized incidence ratio of RCC in dialysis patients of 24.1 (p