Renal tumors: evaluation of prognostic factors in 98 cases from a reference hospital in Porto Alegre, Brazil

Introduction: Renal cell carcinoma (RCC) is an aggressive disease worldwide. Objective: Study traditional prognostic factors associated with pathological reports and the novel markers survivin and B7-H1 by immunohistochemistry. Methods: In a reference hospital of Porto Alegre, Brazil, we conducted a cross-sectional study of RCC in patients who underwent radical nephrectomy between 2006 and 2009. We selected those who were diagnosed with the most common histologic subtypes: clear cell and papillary RCC. We retrospectively reviewed pathological data to determine traditional prognostic factors, like size, presence of coagulative necrosis, Fuhrman grade and tumor-node metastasis (TNM) system. Besides, we performed an immunohistochemistry (IHC) study with survivin and B7-H1. Results: Our sample had 98 cases, 90% of the cases were composed by clear cell histologic subtype, 73% were tumors classified as T1 and T2 in the TNM system, most were Fuhrman nuclear grade 2 or 3, and 70% were positive for necrosis. In relation to the new prognostic markers, we found 50 cases positive to survivin and 38 to B7-H1. In this investigation of traditional prognostic markers and new markers we observed that only necrosis was associated with positive results of biomarkers. < 0.001). Conclusion: This finding confirms previous studies that necrosis is an important factor to consider in the prognosis of RCC.