THE ROLE OF VIMENTIN EXPRESSION IN PREDICTING THE LONG-TERM OUTCOME OF PATIENTS WITH LOCALIZED RENAL-CELL CARCINOMA

Objective To evaluate the prognostic significance of vimentin intermed iary filament expression by tumour cells in patients with renal cell c arcinoma (RCC) localized to the kidney. Patients and methods Thirty-ni ne patients with localized RCC (pT1, pT2) were assessed in a retrospec tive study. Tumour cells were evaluated immunohistochemically for vime ntin, epithelial membrane antigen (EMA) and polyclonal cytokeratin exp ression. The prognosis of cases expressing positive vimentin expressio n in tumour cells was compared with that of cases with no expression. Additional clinical information and conventional histological grade of the tumours were also included in the survival analysis. Results Univ ariate analysis of patient survival and tumour recurrence showed a sta tistically significant association between vimentin-positive tumours a nd poor patient outcome; the EMA stain showed borderline significance and histological grade was significantly associated with prognosis. Th e combination of tumour vimentin expression and histological grade pro vided a better predictor of prognosis and proved to be the best indepe ndent prognosticator of survival by multivariate analysis, Conclusions Vimentin expression by tumour cells provides important prognostic inf ormation for patients with localized RCC; the combination of vimentin expression and histological grade is a better predictor for survival t han grade or vimentin expression alone.