Comparision of histologic distribution of RCC in young and older patients: Results from the SEER database.
419 Background: Renal cell cancer (RCC) incidence is relatively low in younger patients, encompassing 3-5% of all RCC tumors. These tumors tend to be due to hereditary syndromes and genetic mutations that predispose to cancer development. Patients with hereditary renal cancer (HRC) are at a higher risk of multiple tumors and bilateral disease. We hypothesize that there is a difference in histologic distribution in the younger patients and that the younger distribution contains more aggressive histologic subtypes. Methods: SEER 18-registries database was queried for all patients ≥20 years old that were surgically treated for renal cell carcinoma between the years 2001 and 2008. Patients with unknown race, grade, stage, or histology were excluded from the study. Histologies selected were clear cell, papillary, chromophobe, sarcomatoid, and collecting duct. Three cohorts were created with the ages 20-44, 45-64, and ≥65 year olds that contained 3,926, 19,661, and 16,323 patients respectively. Chi-square analysis was used to compare the histologic distributions between the cohorts. Results: There was no difference in the incidence of clear cell RCC between the three cohorts (p = 0.63). The histology distribution was not different in the 45-64 year olds compared to those ≥65 (p = 0.47). The non-clear cell histologies were different between the 3 age groups (p < 0.001). There were a larger percentage of patients in the younger patients that had chromophobe tumors compared to all non-clear cell histologies (p< 0.001). Conclusions: The difference in the non-clear cell histologic distribution between the groups is most likely due to genetic mutations predisposing these patients to chromophobe RCC. There has been limited data on HRCs, due in large part to its low incidence. Although the HRCs are known to have a most common histology, it is likely that this information is incomplete, as younger patients have undiagnosed genetic mutations that led to development of chromophobe tumors. [Table: see text]