Original Article- Urological Oncology Associations Between Presenting Symptoms, Clinicopathological Parameters, and Prognosis in a Contemporary Series of Patients With Renal Cell Carcinoma

Purpose: To evaluate the impact of presenting symptoms on survival in a contemporary series of patients with renal cell carcinoma (RCC). Materials and Methods: We prospectively recorded data on the presenting symptoms, pathology, and RCC-specific survival of 633 consecutive RCC patients who underwent surgery between 2003 and 2012. Results: Four hundred thirty-three RCCs (68%) were incidental, 111 (18%) were asso-ciated with local symptoms, and 89 (14%) were associated with systemic symptoms. Among those with incidental RCC, 317 patients (73%) were completely asymptomatic and 116 patients (27%) presented with symptoms not related to the tumor. During a median follow-up interval of 40 months (interquartile range: 39 to 69 months), 77 pa-tients died from RCC. In univariate analyses, symptom classification was significantly associated with RCC-specific survival (p＜0.001). Patients with incidental RCC and unrelated symptoms tended to have worse prognosis than did patients who were com-pletely asymptomatic, although this difference was not statistically significant (p=0.057). The symptom classification was associated with advanced TNM stages (