Purpose: To assess the long-term survival and prognostic factors in patients with renal-cell carcinoma (RCC) who were treated with radiofrequency ablation (RFA).
Patients and methods: A retrospective review of the records of all patients who underwent RFA of biopsy-proven RCC from February 2006 to December 2010 was performed in our institution. Univariate and multivariate analyses were used to evaluate the prognostic factors for long-term survival after RFA.
Results: RFA was performed in 122 patients (102 men, 20 women) with preoperative imaging available. Mean patient age was 58.5 years (standard deviation [SD]: 14.5), and mean tumor size was 3.4 cm (SD: 1.1). Tumor stage was T1a 93 (76.2%) or T1b 29 (23.8%). The mean follow-up period for RFA was 64.9 months (±11.6) (range 9-83 mos). In total, 5-year cancer-specific survival, 5-year disease-free survival (DFS), 5-year recurrence-free survival (RFS), 5-year metastasis-free survival, and 5-year overall survival (OS) of this cohort was 98.3%, 90.8%, 94.2%, 99.2%, and 98.4%, respectively. In comparison with patients in >3 cm group, patients in ≤3 cm group had better 5-year DFS (P = 0.009), 5-year OS (P = 0.036) and 5-year RFS (P = 0.011). Age and tumor size affected survival rates significantly at univariate analysis (P = 0.031, P = 0.033). Only tumor size was shown to have independent prognostic value in multivariate analysis (P = 0.034).
Conclusion: In appropriately selected patients, RFA is an effective treatment option that provides comparable long-term survival. With use of RFA, there is a high probability of long-term survival of patients with small tumor size.