ABSTRACT
Renal cortical tumors account for about 3% of all solid neoplasms, with an incidence similar to that of all forms of leukemia combined.1 The incidence of renal cell carcinoma (RCC) has risen by 2.3-4.3% each year during the past three decades, resulting in an estimated 38 890 new diagnoses and 12 840 deaths in 2006 in the US alone.1,2 As about one-third of patients diagnosed with RCC die of metastatic disease progression, RCC is the most lethal of the major genitourinary malignancies.1 RCC most commonly presents as a unilateral, sporadic tumor, but multifocal sporadic tumors can be present in between 3 and 25% of patients,3-5 and an additional 1-2% of RCC can be attributed to known familial syndromes, such as von Hippel-Lindau (VHL) disease.6
