Prognostic impact of postoperative C-reactive protein level in patients with metastatic renal cell carcinoma undergoing cytoreductive nephrectomy.

PURPOSE: We explored the prognostic impact of C-reactive protein status in patients with metastatic renal cell carcinoma undergoing cytoreductive nephrectomy.

MATERIALS AND METHODS: The oncological outcome of 40 patients with metastatic renal cell carcinoma (TxpN1M0, TxNxM1) who underwent cytoreductive nephrectomy was analyzed. The C-reactive protein level was measured before and 1 month after cytoreductive nephrectomy. The normal value of C-reactive protein was considered less than 0.5 mg/dl.

RESULTS: During the median followup of 14 months 31 patients (78%) died of the disease. The preoperative C-reactive protein level was not increased in 17 of the 40 patients (nonelevated group). Of the remaining 23 patients with a preoperatively increased C-reactive protein level, after cytoreductive nephrectomy the C-reactive protein level normalized in 17 (normalized group). However, in the remaining 6 patients the C-reactive protein level did not normalize and remained high during followup (nonnormalized group). All of the patients in nonnormalized group died of the disease within 1 year. The overall survival rate of the nonnormalized group was significantly worse than that of the other 2 groups (p <0.0001). No significant difference was found in terms of overall survival rate between the normalized and nonelevated groups (p = 0.22). Multivariate analysis demonstrated that nonnormalized C-reactive protein (p <0.0001), absence of metastatectomy (p = 0.005), poorer performance status (p = 0.006) and bone metastases (p = 0.023) were independent factors for predicting poorer overall survival.

CONCLUSIONS: The current study indicated that C-reactive protein kinetics would predict the clinical course of patients with metastatic renal cell carcinoma who underwent cytoreductive nephrectomy. Larger confirmatory studies would be warranted to validate the current results.