Late solitary cerebral metastasis from renal cell carcinoma: a case report and review of the literature.

Metastatic disease to the brain occurs in 5%-10% of cases of renal cell carcinoma (RCC). Solitary involvement of the brain is less common with a reported incidence of 0.6%-2.5% in large autopsy series. In a review of the literature, only five cases of solitary brain metastasis from RCC with a latency period greater than 10 years have been documented. In this article, we report the case of an 86-year-old white female who developed a brain metastasis 15 years after nephrectomy. As a result of our experience with this patient and a review of the literature, we conclude that in patients with a history of RCC, metastatic lesions from the primary tumor must remain in the differential when evaluating any subsequent brain lesion, as metastases may appear well over a decade after nephrectomy.