The Research Roundup provides an overview of the past week’s research from Mayo Medical Laboratories consultants, including featured abstracts and complete list of published studies and reviews.
Mayo Clinic researchers conducted a study to compare the predictive ability for oncologic outcomes among current tumor size cut-points and clinically relevant alternatives in order to determine which are optimal. Patients who underwent radical or partial nephrectomy between 1970-2010 for renal cell carcinoma were identified. Associations between tumor size and progression-free survival and cancer-specific survival were evaluated using Kaplan-Meier analyses and Cox models. Predictive ability was assessed using c-indexes. There were 536 patients who progressed and 354 who died from renal cell carcinoma. For renal cell carcinoma tumors ≤3.0cm, 10-year progression-free survival and cancer-specific survival rates were 93-95% and 97-99%, respectively. For tumors >3.0-4.0cm, progression-free survival and cancer-specific survival began to decline, with further gradual declines with increasing tumor size. Based on the results, renal cell carcinoma tumors ≤3.0cm in size are associated with favorable outcomes. Thereafter, risks of progression and renal cell carcinoma-death increase gradually with tumor size, with no compelling biological reason to endorse a given cut-point over another. The study was published in Urology.