Lymph-vascular invasion (LVI) is recognized as an adverse pathological feature in patients with renal cell carcinoma (RCC). However, its impact on overall survival (OS) is not clear and scarcely addressed in the literature. We aimed to assess the prognostic ability of LVI as a predictor of OS in RCC patients using a large, North American cohort.
We included 95,783 cM0 RCC patients, diagnosed between 2010 and 2015, who underwent partial or radical nephrectomy within the National Cancer Database. Kaplan-Meier curves and log-rank tests were used to depict and compare survival curves. Cox regression analysis tested the impact of LVI on OS, after adjusting for all available confounders.
Mean age (SD) was 59 (12), and most patients had pT1 stage (72.2%). Nodal status was pN0, pN1, and pNx, in 14.5%, 2.3%, and 83.3%, respectively. Overall, 9.0% of patients had LVI. The mean (SD) follow-up of the cohort was 39 months (24). At 5 years, OS was 65% in patients with LVI vs. 86% in patients without LVI (p<.0001). When patients were stratified based on nodal stage, these rates were 64% vs. 78% in pN0 patients, 31% vs. 41% in pN1 patients, and 69% vs. 87% in pNx patients (all P < 0.001). On multivariable analysis, and in comparison to patients without LVI, those with LVI had 1.37- (P < 0.001), 1.18- (P = 0.068), and 1.53-fold (P < 0.001) greater risk of death, when also harboring pN0, pN1, and pNx disease, respectively.
Our findings are the first, to our best knowledge, to illustrate the clear detrimental impact of LVI on OS in surgically treated RCC patients. These findings might be useful in postoperative patient counseling and need to be accounted for when designing future clinical trials.
Urologic oncology. 2023 Aug 23 [Epub ahead of print]
Ivan Rakic, Nikola Rakic, Alex Stephens, Nicholas Corsi, Matt Davis, Shane Tinsley, Mohit Butaney, Sohrab Arora, Akshay Sood, Riccardo Autorino, Craig Rogers, Firas Abdollah
Vattikuti Urology Institute Center for Outcomes Research, Analytics, and Evaluation (VCORE), Henry Ford Hospital, Detroit, MI; Wayne State University School of Medicine, Detroit, MI., Department of Urology, Baylor College of Medicine, Houston, TX., Vattikuti Urology Institute Center for Outcomes Research, Analytics, and Evaluation (VCORE), Henry Ford Hospital, Detroit, MI., Wayne State University, Detroit, MI., Vattikuti Urology Institute Center for Outcomes Research, Analytics, and Evaluation (VCORE), Henry Ford Hospital, Detroit, MI; Vattikuti Urology Institute, Henry Ford Hospital, Detroit, MI., Department of Urology, University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, Houston, TX., Department of Urology, Rush University, Chicago, IL., Vattikuti Urology Institute Center for Outcomes Research, Analytics, and Evaluation (VCORE), Henry Ford Hospital, Detroit, MI; Vattikuti Urology Institute, Henry Ford Hospital, Detroit, MI. Electronic address: .