Synchronous bilateral renal cell carcinoma: total surgical excision.

Sixty-one patients with bilateral synchronous renal cell carcinoma have undergone total excision of their neoplastic disease. True follow-up of the patients has been obtained from the surgeons or the patients themselves. Fifty-one patients underwent renal parenchymal-sparing procedures in one- or two-stage operations. Successful extracorporeal tumor resection was performed on 17 kidneys. The local tumor recurrence rate is 10%. Ten patients underwent bilateral nephrectomy with maintenance hemodialysis, and 4 of these underwent renal transplantation. The 69% survival rate of the group at five years is better than that of unilateral renal cell carcinoma.