Pre-operative renal arterial embolisation does not provide survival benefit in patients with radical nephrectomy for renal cell carcinoma.

Currently, there is no widespread use of percutaneous renal artery embolisation (PRAE) as a pre-operative treatment in the management of renal cell carcinoma (RCC). There is also a scarcity of studies concerning the potential benefits of this procedure. All patients with RCC who underwent pre-operative PRAE before nephrectomy (n = 227) and all patients solely undergoing surgery (n = 607) at our institution from 1992 to 2006 were included. Information on techniques used, perioperative transfusion requirements, pathological and clinical variables, acute toxicity and complications were obtained from a retrospective review of medical records. Propensity modelling techniques were used to compare cancer-specific survival (CSS) and overall survival (OS) in both groups. Propensity scores were calculated from a logistic matching model including age, gender, clinical tumour size, grading, pN stage, cM stage, pT stage, histology and microvascular invasion. This resulted in 189 matches. The mean follow-up of the entire group of matched patients was 81 months. The 5-year actuarial CSS and OS for the total group of matched patients was 80.8% and 73.9%, respectively. CSS and OS did not show any significant differences between the matched treatment groups. There were no statistical differences in surgical complications between all patients treated with pre-operative PRAE (n = 227) and all patients without PRAE (n = 607), except for blood transfusion (61% vs 24%; p<0.01). Symptoms of post-embolization syndrome, including lumbar pain, fever, nausea, hypertension and macroscopic haematuria, were reported by 202 patients (89%), in most cases being mild and self-limited. There is no conclusive evidence that pre-operative PRAE provides survival benefits in the management of surgically resected RCC.