RENAL CELL CARCINOMA WITH RETROPERITONEAL LYMPH NODES:
ROLE OF LYMPH NODE DISSECTION
ALLAN J. PANTUCK, AMNON ZISMAN, FREDRICK DOREY, DEBBY H. CHAO, KEN-
RYUHAN,
JONATHAN SAID, BARBARA J. GITLITZ, ROBERT A. FIGLIN
ANDARIE S. BELLDEGRUN
From the Departments of Urology, Medicine and Pathology and Laboratory Medicine, University of California School of Medicine, Los Angeles, California
ABSTRACT
Purpose: We better defined the benefits and morbidity of lymph node dissection in patients
with localized renal cell carcinoma using the experience of patients treated at our institution.
Materials and Methods: A retrospective cohort study was performed with outcome assessment
based on the chart review of demographic, clinical and pathological data in 1,087 patients with
renal cell carcinoma treated at our institution. Patients with renal cell carcinoma who did not
undergo nephrectomy as part of cancer treatment, those with bilateral disease and those for
whom nodal status was unknown were not included in this study. A total of 900 patients meeting
these criteria who underwent nephrectomy for unilateral renal cell carcinoma at our medical
center form the principal study population.
Results: Positive lymph nodes were associated with larger, higher grade, locally advanced
primary tumors that were more commonly associated with sarcomatoid features. Positive nodes
were 3 to 4 times more common in patients with metastatic disease and the majority of these
patients could be identified preoperatively. The survival of patients with regional lymph node
involvement only was identical to that of patients with distant metastatic disease only. Patients
with regional nodes and distant metastases had significantly inferior survival to those with
either condition alone. In node negative cases lymph node dissection can be performed with no
additional morbidity but it confers no survival advantage. In node positive cases lymph node
dissection can also be performed safely but it is associated with improved survival and a trend
toward an improved response to immunotherapy.
Conclusions: Regional lymph node dissection is unnecessary in patients with clinically
nega-tive lymph nodes since it offers extremely limited staging information and no benefit in terms of
decreasing disease recurrence or improving survival. In patients with positive lymph nodes
lymph node dissection is associated with improved survival when it is performed in carefully
selected patients undergoing cytoreductive nephrectomy and postoperative immunotherapy.
When lymph nodes are present, they should be resected when technically feasible.
KEYWORDS: carcinoma, renal cell; lymph node dissection; kidney; survival; immunotherapy In 1969 Robson et al advocated dissection of the para-aortic
and paracaval lymph nodes from the bifurcation of the aorta to the crus of the diaphragm as a necessary component of radical nephrectomy, and suggested that the improved sur-vival of patients undergoing radical nephrectomy was due in part to this retroperitoneal lymph node dissection.1 In this
classic report written before adequate preoperative imaging 22.7% of patients undergoing radical nephrectomy had posi-tive lymph nodes, and yet survival was equivalent to that in patients with renal vein tumoral involvement only. The To-ronto group continued to advocate the benefits of lymph node dissection 2 decades later after examining long-term survival in 162 cases of renal cell carcinoma treated with radical nephrectomy2despite conflicting results that have appeared
in the literature concerning the possible benefits of lymph node dissection.1, 3–14 However, other aspects of radical
ne-phrectomy, such as the necessity of removing the whole kid-ney15, 16or routine adrenalectomy, have recently been shown
not to be necessary or beneficial in most adequately staged renal cell carcinoma cases.17, 18
In the era prior to immunotherapy for advanced or meta-static disease pathological evidence of lymph node positive disease portended a striking decrease in life expectancy for
patients with renal cell carcinoma.19, 20However, the
signif-icance of lymphadenopathy and the relative benefit of retro-peritoneal lymph node dissection in the context of cytoreduc-tive nephrectomy and modern adjunccytoreduc-tive immunotherapy has not been adequately examined. Intuitively the inclusion of retroperitoneal lymph node dissection during radical ne-phrectomy should at least add information relevant to stag-ing and the determination of prognosis but more intrigustag-ing is the question of whether it exerts a survival advantage and what trade-off must be made for this possible benefit in respect to potential additional morbidity and mortality. Do patients without evidence of adenopathy experience de-creased recurrence rates or improved survival due to lymph node dissection? Cytoreductive nephrectomy has been shown in 2 phase III randomized studies to improve the survival of patients with metastatic renal cell carcinoma21, 22but is it
necessary to perform lymph node dissection in the context of distant metastatic disease? Is it necessary to perform full retroperitoneal node dissection or is more limited dissection as beneficial? We better defined the benefits and morbidity of lymph node dissection for patients with localized and meta-static renal cell carcinoma using the experience of those treated at our institution in a multidisciplinary program for kidney cancer.
Accepted for publication December 13, 2002.
THEJOURNAL OFUROLOGY® Printed in U.S.A.
Copyright © 2003 by AMERICANUROLOGICALASSOCIATION DOI: 10.1097/01.ju.0000066130.27119.1c
MATERIALS AND METHODS
Patients.With approval by the University of California-Los Angeles institutional review board (99-233) a retrospective cohort study was performed with outcome assessment based on a chart review of demographic, clinical, and pathological data on patients with renal cell carcinoma treated at our institution. The records of 1,087 patients were reviewed. Patients with renal cell carcinoma who did not undergo ne-phrectomy as part of cancer treatment, patients with bilat-eral synchronous tumors whose analysis required special modeling, those with familial renal cell carcinoma syn-dromes, including the von Hippel-Lindau syndrome, and pa-tients for whom nodal status was unknown were not included in this study. Between 1989 and 2000, 900 patients meeting these criteria underwent nephrectomy for unilateral renal cell carcinoma at our medical center and they form the prin-cipal study population of this report. All patients underwent radical or partial nephrectomy and the majority of those with metastases were treated with recombinant interleukin-2 (IL-2) based immunotherapy regimens within the frame of 11 clinical trials. Clinical or pathological details resulting from lymph node dissection during nephrectomy were available for 798 of the 900 patients.
Stage was determined according to the 1997 UICC TNM classification of malignant tumors, 5th edition.23Clinical and
pathological findings were gathered for staging at operation. T stage was defined by pathological examination, and the N and M components were defined according to pathological findings or by clinical data when applicable. Renal cell car-cinomas were classified and graded according to current con-sensus standards24, 25by a small group of experienced
pathol-ogists. Grading was determined according to the 4 tiered Fuhrman system.26 Eastern Cooperative Oncology Group
(ECOG) performance status was determined at initial pre-sentation and at each followup.
Patients were divided into 4 pathological groups; including those with no regional lymph nodes or metastatic disease at diagnosis, those with regional lymph nodes only (fig. 1); those with distant metastatic disease only and those with regional lymph nodes as well as distant metastatic disease. These groups were subdivided into cohorts that did and did not undergo retroperitoneal lymph node dissection at nephrec-tomy. Clinically lymphadenopathy was defined as enlarged hilar or retroperitoneal lymph nodes 1 cm.3 or greater on
preoperative computerized tomography or magnetic reso-nance imaging. The extent of lymph node dissection was determined by a review of surgical reports. Clinical end points for patients without nodes or metastasis at nephrec-tomy were overall survival, disease specific survival and free-dom from local or systemic recurrence. Clinical end points for
patients with nodes and/or metastasis were overall survival and disease specific survival, and local or systemic recur-rence. The impact of lymph node dissection on operative time, estimated operative blood loss, transfusion require-ments, hospital stay, perioperative death and complication rates, impact on eligibility to receive post-cytoreductive ne-phrectomy immunotherapy and best overall response follow-ing immunotherapy was considered. Intraoperative compli-cations that are recorded in the kidney cancer data base and are relevant to lymph node dissection include injuries to the aorta and inferior vena cava, duodenal lacerations and other enterotomies as well as hepatic and splenic tears. Acute and delayed postoperative complications recorded include lower extremity edema, deep vein thrombosis, postoperative bleed-ing, renal failure, adrenal insufficiency, chylous ascites, pro-longed ileus and ischemic colitis. In an effort to decrease the possibility of selection bias the cohorts treated with and without lymph node dissection were compared using the ANOVA method to determine the relative distribution in each group of relevant prognostic factors, including stage, grade and ECOG performance status.
Survival analysis and statistical methods.The end point of interest was survival time, defined as time from treatment initiation (nephrectomy) to the date of death or last followup. Survival distributions were estimated using the Kaplan-Meier method. Comparisons between groups were performed by the log rank method to assess the significance of the Kaplan-Meier curves. To consider potential interactions among numerous variables simultaneously clinical and pathological parameters were evaluated using univariate and multivariate Cox proportional hazard models27to
deter-mine the variables that independently correlated with pro-gressive disease and cancer death. The Pearson chi-square, Wilcoxon rank sum (Mann-Whitney) and 2-sample Student t tests were used when indicated. Data was analyzed using commercially available software. For all tests a difference was considered significant at p⬍0.05.
RESULTS
At diagnosis 535 patients (59%) had no evidence of regional lymph nodes or distant metastasis (N0M0), 129 (14%) had ev-idence of regional lymph nodes (N⫹) and 236 (26%) had evi-dence of distant metastasis only (N0M1). Of the 129 N⫹cases 47 were pathological N1, while 82 were pathological N2. A total of 43 patients had nodal disease only (N1M0), while 86 pre-sented with coexisting distant metastatic disease (N⫹M1). In M0 cases there was a 7.4% overall incidence of regional lymph nodes compared with 26.7% of M1 cases that presented with lymphadenopathy. Median followup for patients alive at the
FIG. 1. A, 32-year-old male who presented with hematuria and nonspecific abdominal pain had small, central right renal cell carcinoma, bulky retroperitoneal adenopathy and no evidence of distant metastatic disease.B, microscopic foci (arrows) of clear cell carcinoma within lymph node surrounding renal pedicle. Reduced from⫻40.
last followup was 30 months. Median time to death was 16 months. Figure 2 shows the survival of the 4 groups. The best survival was seen in patients without nodal or metastatic dis-ease. The survival of patients with nodal disease only (N⫹) was equivalent to that in patients presenting with distant metasta-ses (p⫽0.59), while the survival of patients presenting with nodal and metastatic disease was significantly worse (p⫽0.01). Table 1 lists the demographics of patients presenting with and without regional lymph nodes at diagnosis. Patients with lymph nodes tended to present at a younger age, had larger primary tumors that more commonly occurred on the right side, were more likely to have metastatic disease at presen-tation, presented with higher pathological T stage, and had worse ECOG performance status and higher grade tumors. Patients with regional nodes were 3 times more likely to have a tumor with predominantly sarcomatoid histology. Com-pared with 54% of N0 cases only 18% of N⫹cases presented with organ confined disease and 67% versus 32% presented with low grade (1 to 2) tumors, respectively. The median survival of patients with nodal and distant metastatic dis-ease was 10 months compared with twice that in patients with nodal or distant metastases only (p⫽0.002). Long-term 5-year survival of patients with node positive disease was 23%.
Table 2 shows clinical characteristics and outcomes of pa-tients who were treated with and without regional lymph node dissection at nephrectomy. Overall 54% of the whole study cohort underwent some degree of lymph node dissec-tion, including limited dissection in 64%, full template dis-section in 20% and lymph node disdis-section of unspecified extent in 16%. For patients without metastasis there were no statistically significant differences between those who did and did not undergo lymph node dissection in terms of sur-gery time, estimated blood loss, transfusion requirements, perioperative complication rates or hospitalization. Patients with metastatic disease had greater blood loss, transfusion requirements, surgery time, hospital time, and surgical com-plication rates than patients with nonmetastatic disease. However, an ANOVA test including metastatic disease and lymph node dissection as variables did not demonstrate a greater morbidity of lymph node dissection in M1 compared with M0 cases. The differences in outcomes for patients with M1 disease who did and who did not undergo lymph node dissection did not achieve statistical significance.
The overall, local, and distant recurrence-free survival of 257 patients with node negative disease who underwent no lymph dissection was the same as the survival of 238 with node negative disease who underwent lymph node dissec-tion (p⫽0.42, fig. 3). Survival was equivalent in those who underwent limited, full and an unspecified degree of lymph node dissection (data not shown). However, there was a statistically significant survival advantage in 112 patients with node positive disease who underwent lymph node dissection compared with 17 who did not undergo lymph node dissection on univariate analysis (p⫽0.0002, fig. 4). Median survival was approximately 5 months better in those undergoing lymphadenectomy. A similar proportion in each group received immunotherapy following nephrec-tomy. Of those who did not undergo lymph node dissection
FIG. 2. Kaplan-Meier survival curves for 4 patient cohorts. Similar survival was noted in patients with lymphadenopathy or distant metastases, while those with positive lymph nodes and distant metastatic disease had significantly worse survival.
TABLE 1. Clinical characteristics of patients with and without regional retroperitoneal lymphadenopathy
No. Node Neg. (%)
No. Node Pos.
(%) p Value
Total pts. 771 129
Males 509 (66) 76 (59) 0.146
Rt. tumor 415 (54) 64 (50) 0.03
Smokers 407 (53) 73 (57) 0.456
Mean pack yrs. 16.5 17.5 Metastatic disease 236 (31) 86 (66) N1 Not applicable 43 (33) N2 Not applicable 86 (67) Clear cell 595 (77) 84 (65) Papillary 101 (13) 19 (14.7) Sarcomatoid 42 (5.4) 20 (15.5) Stage (%): 0.008 T1 (less than 7 cm.) 283 (38) 7 (6) T2 (greater than 7 cm.) 116 (16) 15 (12) T3 310 (42) 88 (69) T4 33 (4) 17 (13) Organ confined (54) (18) ECOG performance status (%): 0.006 0 325 (45) 30 (25) 1 373 (52) 81 (66) 2 19 (3) 11 (9) Grade (%): 0.009 1/2 466 (67) 38 (32) 3/4 236 (33) 83 (68)
71% remained eligible to receive systemic immunotherapy compared with 63% who underwent lymph node dissection. ANOVA analysis showed no difference in the distribution of tumor stage or ECOG performance status between these 2 groups. However, there was an imbalance between the 2 groups in the distribution of tumor grade with patients who underwent lymph node dissection more likely to have higher grade tumors. In N⫹cases 50% of grade 1, 72% of grade 2, 92% of grade 3 and 100% of grade 4 tumors were associated with concomitant lymph node dissection at ne-phrectomy. Thus, the survival of patients with N⫹disease undergoing lymph node dissection was better than those not undergoing lymphadenectomy despite a worse pre-dicted prognosis since patients with higher grade tumors have been shown to have worse survival than those with lower grade disease. Despite the positive impact on sur-vival there was no difference in local or systemic recurrence rates following lymph node dissection and recurrence rates were similar regardless of the extent of lymph node dissection (p⫽0.57).
A number of Cox multivariate regression models were per-formed to analyze variables that were independently predic-tive of survival in N⫹cases, including lymph node dissection, tumor grade, ECOG performance status, immunotherapy, metastatic disease and tumor stage (table 3). In each model the absence of lymph node dissection remained a significant predictor of decreased survival since patients not undergoing lymph node dissection were 3 times more likely to die than those who underwent the procedure. Patients with N⫹ dis-ease who underwent lymph node dissection had only a 44% incidence of progressive disease following 1 course of immu-notherapy compared with 56% of those in whom lymph nodes were left in place. In the multivariate model immunotherapy had a protective effect on the survival of those in whom the nodes were removed that approached statistical significance (p⫽0.057).
DISCUSSION
Surgery remains the mainstay of treatment for locally confined renal cell carcinoma and it has recently been shown to be a fundamental part of an integrated treatment plan along with immunotherapy for patients with metastatic
re-nal cell carcinoma.21, 22The 5-year survival rate for all
dis-ease stages in patients with renal cell carcinoma has contin-ued to improve.28However, it remains unclear what portion,
if any, of this improved survival can be attributed to retro-peritoneal lymph node dissection as advocated by Robson et al in their classic study describing the surgical management of renal cell carcinoma.1Recognizing the unpredictable
lym-phatic drainage from renal tumors along with the incidence of concomitant blood borne metastases,29the practice of
sys-tematic, extended lymphadenectomy has decreased at many institutions and many patients are left with unknown patho-logical nodal status.30
The published literature has been scant and contradictory in its conclusions regarding the benefits of lymphadenecto-my1, 3–13 with many earlier studies promoting the value of
lymphadenectomy, while more recent studies failed to show any benefit. Positive lymph nodes are commonly associated with metastatic disease and yet the literature on lymph node dissection in patients with known metastatic disease is even more scant.14Johnsen and Hellsten studied 554 cases
involv-ing renal cell carcinoma diagnosed at autopsy and found only 80 (14%) with positive lymph nodes, including 75 with addi-tional distant metastases, of which only 5 showed nodal disease confined to the tissues surrounding the great ves-sels.31Thus, fewer than 1% of cases were theoretically
cur-able by nephrectomy and lymph node dissection alone. The incidence of positive lymph nodes at nephrectomy has de-creased dramatically with the introduction of computerized tomography1, 12and improved preoperative staging.
Lymph node dissection has been proposed to offer several possible benefits, including staging and prognosis, decreas-ing local or systemic recurrence, and improved survival. The original study of Robson et al showed a 23% incidence of positive nodes in patients who underwent extensive lymph-adenectomy, which was associated with 10-year survival that approached 35%.1 Several contemporaneous series showed
5-year survival rates of only 15% but the extent of lymph node dissection was not specified.3–5 Phillips and Messing
reported that in a series of 37 patients who underwent rad-ical nephrectomy and later had progression local control was improved by lymph node dissection without extending hospi-tal stay or adding to surgical morbidity.10Herrlinger et al
compared the survival of 511 patients undergoing radical nephrectomy, of whom 320 underwent extended dissection and 191 underwent only facultative or staging lymphadenec-tomy.9They found 56% 10-year survival in those who
under-went extended dissection compared with only 41% in those treated with facultative lymphadenectomy only (p ⬍0.01). More recently, Minervini et al evaluated a series of 167 patients, including 108 who underwent nephrectomy alone and 59 who underwent nephrectomy with regional lymph node dissection limited to the anterior, posterior and lateral sides of the ipsilateral great vessel from the level of the renal vessels down to the inferior mesenteric artery.13In this
se-ries the 5-year survival rate for the 108 patients who under-went nephrectomy alone was 79%, which was the same as the 78% rate for those who also underwent lymph node dissec-tion, suggesting no clinical benefit.
The only randomized phase III trial to address the benefits of lymph node dissection during radical nephrectomy for patients with resectable nonmetastatic renal cell carcinoma was performed by the European Organization for the Re-search and Treatment of Cancer Genitourinary Group in study 30881.12 In this study dissection extended from the
crus of the diaphragm inferior to the bifurcation of the aorta. The incidence of unsuspected lymph nodes after proper pre-operative staging was only 3.3% and complication rates were similar between the 2 groups. Only the preliminary results of this study have been published since in 1999 only 17% of patients enrolled had achieved a survival end point.
In the current University of California-Los Angeles data
TABLE 2. Clinical characteristics of patients with and without retroperitoneal lymph node dissection during nephrectomy
No Node Dissection Node Dissection p Value No. pts. (%) 365 (46) 433 (54) No. disease (%): M1 108 (36) 195 (64) M0 257 (52) 238 (48) % Dissection:
Full Not applicable 20
Limited Not applicable 64
Unspecified Not applicable 16
Mean estimated blood loss⫾SE (ml.): 0.057
M1 913⫾1,526 1,132⫾1,753
M0 652⫾963 856⫾1,301
% Transfusion: 0.058
M1 38 47 0.143
M0 36 34
Mean operative time⫾SE (mins.): 0.32
M0 178⫾63 187⫾78
M1 201⫾93 205⫾87
Mean hospital stay⫾SE (days): 0.65
M0 6.7⫾5.8 7.4⫾5.03
M1 7.9⫾7.3 7.7⫾8.1
No. periop. deaths 4 4
% Complications: M0 23 17 M1 24 25 % Recurrence: Local 0.01 0.06 Any 10.7 23.8
presented despite the addition of essentially no significant additional morbidity or mortality lymph node dissection dur-ing nephrectomy in patients with clinically negative lymph nodes did not add a measurable benefit. We could not detect a decrease incidence of local or systemic recurrence, or an added benefit in terms of survival in clinically node negative cases. Furthermore, in the current study population of 900 patients the incidence of patients presenting with regional nodal metastases in the absence of distant disease was less than 5% (43 of 900). It is likely that many of these patients are identified preoperatively by computerized tomography or intraoperatively by surgical exploration. In the remainder in whom disease is unrecognized it is just as likely that lymph nodes may be found in the perirenal fat and surrounding the
pedicle as along the great vessels. Fewer than 8% of node positive cases in this study were discovered incidentally in the sense that nodes were found in the pathological specimen without a clinical impression of nodal involvement. Clearly the majority of node positive cases are identified prior to lymph node dissection. Furthermore, only 5 patients (less than 0.5%) in the whole University of California-Los Angeles data base presented with a tumor of less than 7 cm. and without coexisting distant metastases, and only 10 presented with organ confined disease without metastatic disease. This knowledge has great implications regarding the manage-ment of small (less than 4 cm.) incidental renal mass, for which current trends have shifted toward minimally invasive as well as percutaneous ablative techniques that may
pre-FIG. 3. Survival of 495 patients undergoing nephrectomy for clinically localized disease was same regardless of whether they underwent lymph node dissection (LND) at nephrectomy.
FIG. 4. Survival of patients with metastatic disease undergoing cytoreductive nephrectomy prior to planned systemic immunotherapy was
clude adequate lymphadenectomy. The current data suggest that lymph node dissection can safely be omitted in these patients in the absence of evidence of metastatic disease.
In the classic study of nephrectomy for metastatic renal cell carcinoma in the pre-immunotherapy era deKernion et al found that survival was significantly decreased in patients with the addition of positive nodes, positive regional nodes were strongly associated with local recurrence in the renal fossa and patients in whom regional disease was not removed during nephrectomy were dead within 1 year with only 20% alive at 6 months.19A more recent experience presented by
investigators at the National Cancer Institute described 154 patients with metastatic renal cell carcinoma who underwent cytoreductive nephrectomy at the National Institutes of Health as preparation for IL-2 based therapy.14They found a
8.5-month median survival in patients with positive nodes, which was inferior to 15-month survival in those without nodes. Furthermore, 8.6-month median survival in those in whom lymph nodes were completely resected was similar to 8.5-month survival in those with incomplete resection and each result was better than 3.3-month survival in patients deemed unresectable. These values are in general agreement with the data on patients with metastatic renal cell carci-noma currently presented. In the current data patients in whom positive regional lymph nodes were left in place had statistically inferior survival to similar patients in whom regional disease was resected by lymphadenectomy. Further-more, in the National Cancer Institute and University of California-Los Angeles series no real difference could be de-tected in survival that was related to the extent of node dissection performed. It is possible that this fact merely reflects the lack of prospectively defined templates dictating surgical technique and the extent of dissection performed was individualized to suit each particular patient with those who had clinically evident but minimal nodal disease not undergoing formal dissection from the diaphragm to the aor-tic bifurcation. It is possible that a clear statement describing exactly what surgical boundaries represent adequate node dissection can be defined only by prospective clinical trials. It is interesting that immunotherapy appeared to benefit pa-tients with nodal disease who underwent surgical resection of these lymph nodes since the University of California-Los Angeles data suggest that patients who have regional lymph-adenopathy do not respond in a meaningful way to systemic immunotherapy and experience improved survival following treatment.28
There are several limitations to the current study. Data were collected in a retrospective manner by chart review, the extent of lymph node dissection was not standardized and the decision of whether to perform lymph node dissection was left to surgeon choice rather than being assigned through a ran-domization process. In addition, determining the extent of node dissection retrospectively based on operative reports depends on the completeness of surgeon dictation and is subject to subjective interpretation. For these reasons we hesitate to overstate the comparisons of the benefits of full versus limited dissection, although it should be stated that these data were collected for data base entry by reviewers blinded to the purpose of the current study. However, more
significantly, because of the nature of these limitations, we were concerned that the group not undergoing lymph node dissection was highly selected and the survival advantage noted for node positive cases in which lymph node dissection was done may have been due to unrecognized selection bias rather than to a treatment effect. For example, were patients who were more ill or had more extensive disease selected not to undergo lymph node dissection?
Several strategies were used in an effort to minimize the potential for selection bias. Surgical reports were reviewed to determine the reason that node dissection was deferred. From this review it became clear that few patients had the nodes left in situ because they were believed by the primary surgeon to be unresectable. Many patients were treated dur-ing the earlier half of the 1990s, when a common practice was to leave the nodes in place in patients who had N⫹M0 dis-ease as a marker lesion that could be serially imaged to assess the response to immunotherapy. Poorer survival of these patients with N⫹M0 disease in whom nodes were left in place contrasts with the overall better survival of this group as a whole. In most patients with metastatic disease in addition to nodal disease, the decision to leave the nodes in place was based on the primary surgeon perception that node dissection would not provide an added benefit in light of the distant disease that was left in place.
ANOVA was performed to determine the relative distribu-tion of prognostic factors in the dissecdistribu-tion and no dissecdistribu-tion groups at the original presentation. In the University of California-Los Angeles data set ECOG performance status, tumor grade and tumor stage are the 3 variables that are most significant for determining patient outcome and sur-vival and they make up the University of California-Los Angeles Integrated Staging System, which has been previ-ously described.32 ANOVA revealed equal distributions for
stage and ECOG performance status between the groups, while it was noted that the group that underwent lymph node dissection was more likely to have higher grade disease, which would normally portend worse survival. However, the same trend for improved survival in the lymph node dissec-tion group was noted when patients were evaluated across each grade level separately (data not shown). Furthermore, it is unlikely that the survival difference noted can be attrib-uted merely to overall tumor burden since data have previ-ously been presented showing no survival difference between patients with microscopic and macroscopic nodal involve-ment in the same cohort.33We next questioned whether the
no dissection group had greater surgical complications or became ineligible for immunotherapy due to more rapidly progressive disease following nephrectomy. However, a sim-ilar incidence of patients in each group remained eligible and received immunotherapy following cytoreductive nephrec-tomy with 71% of the no dissection group going on to immu-notherapy compared with only 63% of the dissection group. Since generally only patients with an ECOG performance status of 0 or 1 are selected for high dose IL-2 therapy, this finding indicates that the 2 groups were similar in perfor-mance status following nephrectomy as well as diagnosis. Furthermore, several Cox multivariate models were created to examine the potential interactions of multiple prognostic variables simultaneously, including lymph node dissection, tumor stage, tumor grade, ECOG performance status, dis-tant metastatic disease, treatment with immunotherapy and University of California-Los Angeles Integrated Staging Sys-tem category. In each model failure to perform lymph node dissection remained a significant and independent predictor of decreased survival after accounting for these other vari-ables (RR⬎3.0).
Recently much has been learned to explain the molecular mechanisms behind the clinical patterns of observed meta-static spread. For example, it is well established that angio-genesis (the formation of new blood vessels) is necessary for
TABLE 3. Cox multivariate survival analysis of patients with retroperitoneal lymph nodes treated with and without retroperitoneal lymph node dissection during cytoreductive
nephrectomy
Variable HR⫾SE (95% CI) p Value No dissection 3.11⫾1.1 (1.48–6.11) 0.002 Grade 1.89⫾0.41 (1.24–2.89) 0.003 ECOG performance status 1.36⫾0.29 (0.89–2.07) 0.153 Immunotherapy 0.62⫾0.16 (0.37–1.01) 0.057 Metastases 1.12⫾0.32 (0.64–1.95) 0.678
the growth and metastatic spread of solid tumors. The vas-cular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) family of genes in-cludes unique isoforms, of which each is capable of binding to unique receptors. Evidence is accumulating that different VEGF family members are important in determining the route of metastatic spread through classic angiogenesis via blood vessels or through lymphangiogenesis. Experimental systems have demonstrated the importance of VEGF and VEGF receptor-2 in tumor progression through the promo-tion of blood vessel formapromo-tion.34VEGF-D is capable of
acti-vating VEGF receptor-2 and VEGF receptor-3, a receptor expressed by endothelial cells of the lymphatic channels, and it is thought to be a molecular signal for lymphangiogenesis35
and lymphatic tumor spread.36 Stacker et al noted that
VEGF-D expression in a mouse tumor model led to spread of the tumor to lymph nodes, which could be blocked by an antibody specific for VEGF-D, whereas the expression of the angiogenic growth factor VEGF, which activates only VEGFR-2 did not.37The factors that promote the regulation
of the expression of different VEGF genes is not entirely clear. Gunningham et al recently observed that VEGF, VEGF-B and VEGF-D gene expression is differentially reg-ulated by the level of tumor hypoxia and by von Hippel-Lindau gene expression in renal cell carcinoma cell lines.38It
is possible that different tumor genetics and different risk factor exposures may lead to differential tumor gene expres-sion, resulting in unique tumor biologies with unique pat-terns of spread and response to treatment. Currently a renal cancer tissue array study is underway at our institution to determine expression of the VEGF genes and receptors, which will be correlated with clinical patterns of tumor spread, treatment response and survival.
CONCLUSIONS
The morbidity associated with retroperitoneal lymph node dissection during nephrectomy appears to be acceptable. However, regional lymph node dissection is unnecessary in patients with clinically negative lymph nodes because it of-fers extremely limited staging information and no benefit in terms of decreasing disease recurrence or improving sur-vival. When lymph nodes are positive, lymph node dissection is associated with improved survival when it is performed in carefully selected patients undergoing cytoreductive ne-phrectomy and postoperative immunotherapy. Although de-fining the optimal surgical boundaries would require a pro-spective comparison of various possible templates, the current data suggest that when lymph nodes are present, they should be resected when technically feasible.
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