The Effect of Female Gender in Renal Cell Carcinomas

Renal cell carcinoma accounts 85% of all renal tumors. In this study, we aimed to investigate the clinical and pathological results of female patients with RCCs and compare with male patients. The patients who underwent radical or partial nephrectomy were reviewed retrospectively. The clinical characteristics of male and female patients were analyzed and compared with age, tumor size, histological subtype, Fuhrman nuclear grade, and pathological T stage. There were 266 patients in the study. Of these patients; 181 patients (68.05%) were male and 85 patients (31.95%) were female. The female patients’ and male patients’ mean ages were 57.09±13.36 and 60.24±10.44 years (P=0.007), respectively. Tumor size was smaller in female patients than male patients with statistically significant association (5.69±3.20 and 6.97±3.67, P=0.046). According to the histological subtypes, female patients had a greater proportion of chromophobe RCC with 18.82% of the patients. Interestingly, papillary (12.56%) and sarcomatoid differentiation (6.01%) subtypes were predominantly seen in male patients. The proportion of localized disease (pT1-2) was 80% and 74.3% in female and male patients, grade 1 and 2 consist 61.16% and 48.63% of the female and male patients. The female patients with RCC had smaller tumors and presented at younger age than male patients. Further research and epidemiologic studies are needed to define the effect of gender in renal cell carcinomas.