Case Report
Renal Medullary Carcinoma Response to Chemotherapy: a Referral Center Experience in Brazil
Marina Cavalcanti Maroja Silvino, Camila Motta Venchiarutti Moniz, Gustavo Henrique Munhoz Piotto, Sheila Siqueira, Ariel Galapo Kann, Carlos Dzik
Published:
August 20, 2013
DOI:
10.4081/rt.2013.e44
License:
©Copyright M. Cavalcanti Maroja Silvino et al.2013Licensee PAGEPress, ItalyThis is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/) which permits unrestricted non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Abstract
Renal medullary carcinoma (RMC) is rare, accounting for less than 1% of all renal neoplasms. Case reports suggest RMC is highly aggressive, poorly responsive to chemotherapy, often metastatic at diagnosis, affects young men with sickle cell trait, and median overall survival (mOS) is less than 12 months. We report the epidemiological characteristics, treatments performed, response rate to each treatment and mOS of five patients with RMC. All patients had sickle cell trait, four were male, three had metastatic disease at diagnosis and mean age at diagnosis was 25 years. Non-metastatic patients were submitted to nephrectomy. Two patients had partial response to first line chemotherapy including cisplatin and gemcitabine. There was no response to sunitinib or second line chemo - therapy; mOS was 6 months. Due to its rarity, case series are the only evidence available to discuss the treatment for RMC. In our experience, only cisplatin and gemcitabine based regimen offered response.