Small renal tumors: correlation of clinical and pathological features with tumor size.

We analyzed the association between tumor diameter and pathological stage, histological subtype, tumor grade and the incidence of metastases in renal cell carcinoma with a diameter of up to 4 cm (clinical stage T1a).We analyzed a consecutive series of 663 patients with renal tumors 4 cm or less who underwent surgery at our institution between 1990 and 2006. After excluding 115 patients (17.3%) with benign tumors 548 with renal cell carcinoma were included in the study. Tumor size on preoperative imaging was correlated with pathological stage, tumor grade, histological subtype and incidence of metastases at diagnosis. For data analysis tumors were stratified by tumor diameter into 3 groups, …