Department of Urology, Hannover Medical School, Hannover, Germany.
The aim of this study was to investigate the influence of sex on stage, grade, subtype, and prognosis of patients with renal cell carcinoma (RCC).
This study included 1,810 patients treated by surgery for RCC at the University Hospitals of Hannover and Marburg between 1990 and 2005. The median follow-up was 54 months.
Of all the patients, 1,167 (64.5%) were men and 643 (35.5%) were women. Men were significantly younger (mean, 61.4 vs. 63.5 years; p < 0.001), and suffered more frequently from advanced tumor stages (45.2 vs. 37.6%; p = 0.002) and higher tumor grades (14.1 vs. 11.1%; p = 0.003). Kaplan Meier curves revealed a significant difference in cancer-specific survival between men and women (5-year survival 64.7 vs. 74.0%; p = 0.002). However, unlike tumor stage, grade, and N/M status, sex could not be retained as a significant independent prognostic marker in multivariate analysis.
RCC in men is characterized by higher tumor stages and more frequent metastasis at diagnosis along with inferior tumor-specific survival. However, as sex failed to qualify as an independent prognostic marker for cancer-specific survival, delayed diagnosis due to insufficient or neglected (routine) medical check-up and/or more aggressive tumor biology could be concurrently causative for the higher incidence of RCC in men.
Written by:
Waalkes S, Rott H, Herrmann TR, Wegener G, Kramer MW, Merseburger AS, Schrader M, Hofmann R, Kuczyk MA, Schrader AJ.
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Reference: Onkologie. 2011;34(1-2):24-8.
doi: 10.1159/000323379
PubMed Abstract
PMID: 21346381
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