Background
Kidney and renal pelvis cancers (KC) represent 4% of new cancer cases in the US. Although it is a common cancer, there is no data to compare the effect of laterality on survival in veteran population. In this abstract, we attempt to bridge this gap and compare the effect of laterality on survival.
Methods
We obtained data from Albany VA (VAMC) for patients diagnosed with KC between 2010-2020. Data were analyzed for age, stage at diagnosis, histopathological type, laterality of tumor, and 6,12 and 60-months survival after the diagnosis and performed a comparison of overall survival of left versus rightsided cancer by calculating odds ratio using logistic regression, significance level was established at p< 0.05.
Results
We reviewed 130 patients diagnosed with KC at VAMC. 62 had right-sided, 62 had left-sided, and 6 had bilateral cancer. Clear cell (40.8%) was predominant type. Other less common histopathological types include Papillary RCC, mixed, papillary urothelial and transitional types. 58 patients had stage 1 (28 right versus 30 left), 8 had stage 2 (5 versus 3), 29 had stage 3 (13 versus 16), 16 with stage 4 (12 versus 4), and 14 had stage 0 (papillary-urothelial). 59.2% patients underwent surgical treatment after diagnosis (R=35, L=39). At 6-months, 60 patients (96.8%) with left-sided and 53 (85.5%) with right-sided cancer survived. The odds of surviving 6-months were 12% higher (95% CI: 1.014, 1.236; p=0.03) in left versus right-sided cancer. For 1-year survival, the results were similar. 111 patients completed a 5-year follow-up and there was no evidence to support a difference in survival between cohorts at 5-years: OR (95% CI: 0.88, 1.47; p=0.32).
Conclusions
In this study, we discovered that leftsided cancer showed better survival at 6-months and 1-year compared to right-sided cancer, but 5-year survival rates appeared similar irrespective of laterality of cancer. Both subgroups had similar distribution for baseline characteristics with majority of patients being males, older than 60 years, with stage 1 disease. Further studies in larger populations with wider distribution of baseline characteristics are needed to establish clear role of laterality as a prognostic factor.