Clinical study of incidentally diagnosed renal adenocarcinoma

OBJECTIVES: To determine the incidence of incidentally detected renal cell carcinoma and compare primary tumor size, clinical stage (TNM) and survival versus renal cell carcinoma with clinical manifestations. PATIENTS AND METHODS: 140 patients diagnosed as having renal cell carcinoma from 1986 to 1994 were retrospectively studied. Of these, 121 had undergone surgery. The statistical analyses were done using the ANOVA test and the Yates-adjusted chi 2 test for a significance value of p < 0.05. RESULTS/CONCLUSIONS: Incidentally detected renal cell carcinoma accounted for 40.7% of the cases. No differences were observed between both groups for age (p = 0.5), sex (p = 0.6), compromised side (p = 0.9), lymph node invasion (p = 0.1), distant metastasis (p = 0.01), multiple unsuspected tumors (p = 0.4) or survival (p = 0.8). The incidentally detected tumors, however, were smaller (p = 0.0002) and more frequently localized to the kidney (p = 0.0003).