Article of the Week: Identifying predictors of renal function decline after surgery

Every week the Editor-in-Chief selects the Article of the Week from the current issue of BJUI. The abstract is reproduced below and you can click on the button to read the full article, which is freely available to all readers for at least 30 days from the time of this post.

In addition to the article itself, there is an accompanying editorial written by a prominent member of the urological community. This blog is intended to provoke comment and discussion and we invite you to use the comment tools at the bottom of each post to join the conversation.

If you only have time to read one article this week, it should be this one.

Preoperative predictors of renal function decline after radical nephroureterectomy for upper tract urothelial carcinoma

Matthew Kaag, Landon Trost*, R. Houston Thompson*, Ricardo Favaretto†, Vanessa Elliott, Shahrokh F. Shariat‡, Alexandra Maschino†, Emily Vertosick†, Jay D. Raman and Guido Dalbagni†

Penn State Hershey Medical Center, Hershey, PA, *Mayo Clinic, Rochester, MN, †Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, New York, NY, USA, and ‡Medical University of Vienna, Vienna, Austria

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OBJECTIVES

To model renal function after radical nephroureterectomy (RNU) for upper tract urothelial carcinoma (UTUC). To identify predictors of renal function decline after surgery, thereby allowing the identification of patients likely to be ineligible for cisplatin-based chemotherapy in the adjuvant setting.

PATIENTS AND METHODS

We retrospectively identified 374 patients treated with RNU for UTUC at three centres between 1995 and 2010. Estimated glomerular filtration rate (eGFR) was calculated using Chronic Kidney Disease Epidemiology Collaboration equation before RNU and at early (1–5 months after RNU) and late (>5 months) time points after RNU. Only patients deemed eligible for cisplatin-based chemotherapy before RNU (preoperative glomerular filtration rate [GFR] ≥60 mL/min/1.73 m²) were included. Multivariable analysis identified the preoperative predictors of eGFR after RNU at early postoperative and late postoperative time points.

RESULTS

A total of 163 patients had an eligible early post-RNU eGFR measurement and 172 had an eligible late eGFR measurement. The median eGFR declined by 32% and did not show a significant trend toward recovery over time (P = 0.4). On multivariable analysis preoperative eGFR and patient age were significantly associated with early and late postoperative eGFR, while Charlson comorbidity index score was significantly associated with late postoperative eGFR alone.

CONCLUSIONS

In patients with normal preoperative eGFR (≥60 mL/min/1.73 m²), renal function decreases by one-third after RNU and does not show evidence of recovery over time. Elderly patients and those with pre-RNU eGFR closer to 60 mL/min/1.73 m² (lower eGFR in the present cohort) are more likely to be ineligible for adjuvant cisplatin-based chemotherapy regimens because of renal function loss after RNU.