Increasing trends in kidney cancer over the last 2 decades in Saudi Arabia

OBJECTIVES: To examine the trends of kidney cancer over the last 2 decades in a subset of a Saudi Arabian population. METHODS: We conducted a retrospective study in a tertiary care center including all adult patients with primary kidney cancer who presented and were managed between 1990 and 2010. The time period was split into 4 quartiles, and variables tested and compared using chi-square, T-test, and Kaplan-Meier curves for survival. RESULTS: The total was 215 patients with a mean age of 57.8 years. There was an increase in the number of kidney cancer cases over the last 2 decades. There was no significant difference in the mode of presentation or stage distribution between quartiles. A significant change was observed in the management towards minimally invasive and nephron-sparing surgeries (p<0.001). There was no change in recurrence-free and disease-specific survival over the last 20 years. CONCLUSIONS: There have been an increasing number of kidney cancer patients over the last 2 decades with no observed migration towards more incidental and low stage tumors as compared with developed countries.