Collecting duct renal carcinoma

PubMed, the Internet portal of biomedical and life sciences literature, indexed an interesting article, entitled “Collecting duct carcinoma associated with renal stones.” (Prog Urol. 2007 Feb;17(1):105-7). Authors are Kourda N, El Attat R, Derouiche A, et al., from the Service d’Anatomie et de Cytologie Pathologiques, Hopital Charles Nicolles, Tunis, Tunisie. Collecting duct carcinoma is an extremely rare disease, representing less than 1% of all renal tumours. The authors report the case of a 72-year-old patient presenting with right low back pain associated with episodes of total macroscopic haematuria. Imaging showed a heterogeneous mass in the upper pole of the right kidney associated with pyelocaliceal stones. Multiple secondary lesions were observed in the liver. Macroscopically, the mid-renal tumour was 7.5 cm in diameter surrounding the stone-containing pyelocaliceal cavities. This tumour had spread to the cortex and invaded the perirenal fat. The diagnosis of Fuhrman grade 3 collecting duct carcinoma associated with renal stones and liver metastases was adopted. The main differential diagnosis was urothelial carcinoma with a glandular component. In the present case, the diagnosis was made more difficult by the concomitant presence of renal stones. To access the full abstract of the article, click here.