Experience of diagnosis and management of metanephric adenoma: retrospectively analysis of 10 cases and a literature review

BACKGROUND: Metanephric adenoma (MA) is a rare benign tumor with only several hundred cases reported worldwide to date. Herein, we retrospectively summarized the experience of diagnosis and management of ten MA cases. METHODS: A total of ten MA patients were included in this study definitely diagnosed by postoperative immunohistochemistry at the First Affiliated Hospital of Nanjing Medical University from January 2010 to January 2019. Clinical characteristics, image features, therapeutic procedures, histological diagnosis and outcomes of them were retrospectively analyzed. RESULTS: Characteristics of the patient population were nine females and one male with age of 36.8±17.5 years. The mean tumor size was 33.6 mm (range from 35.0 to 70.0 mm). Among them, nine cases were asymptomatic and one case showed acute flank pain. All ten cases underwent plain and enhanced computed tomography (CT) scan. Laparoscopic partial nephrectomy (LPN) was performed in seven cases and laparoscopic radical nephrectomy (LRN) was applied in the other three cases. Postoperative routine pathology results confirmed that seven cases were MA. However, two patients were misdiagnosed with papillary renal cell carcinoma (PRCC), and another was misdiagnosed with Wilms’ tumor. Further immunohistochemistry eventually confirmed all these ten cases as MA. During a mean follow-up of 58.3 month, all ten patients were alive with no local recurrences nor metastases. CONCLUSIONS: In summary, MA is a rare benign tumor with no distinct clinical symptoms. The definite diagnosis depends on the postoperative pathological findings. Fortunately, due to its non-malignant nature, patients always have a good prognosis.