A new study reveals that the type of surgery a patient with kidney cancer receives depends more on the surgeon's preference than on the patient's tumor size, demographic characteristics, or general medical health.
The findings indicate that patients with kidney cancer often may not be receiving the most appropriate surgical care. The study is published in the April 15, 2008 issue of CANCER, a peer-reviewed journal of the American Cancer Society.
Open radical nephrectomy is the standard surgical treatment for patients with localized kidney cancer, but partial nephrectomy and laparoscopic surgery have emerged as attractive alternatives that are less invasive but equally effective. However, many physicians have not adopted these surgical techniques despite their benefits.
To investigate the potential barriers to adoption of partial nephrectomy and renal laparoscopy, David Miller, MD of the University of California Los Angeles and colleagues reviewed data from the National Cancer Institute's Surveillance, Epidemiology and End Results (SEER) program and the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS). They identified 5,483 Medicare beneficiaries diagnosed between 1997 and 2002 with localized kidney cancer, determined the type of surgery received by each patient, and identified the primary surgeon for each case.