Greco F, Beomonte Zobel B, Mallio CA. Decreased cross-sectional muscle area in male patients with clear cell renal cell carcinoma and peritumoral collateral vessels. World J Radiol 2022; 14(4): 82-90 [PMID: 35646290 DOI: 10.4329/wjr.v14.i4.82]
Corresponding Author of This Article
Federico Greco, MD, Doctor, Unità Operativa Complessa Diagnostica per Immagini Territoriale Aziendale, Cittadella della Salute Azienda Sanitaria Locale di Lecce, Piazza Filippo Bottazzi, Lecce 73100, Italy. federicogreco@outlook.com
Research Domain of This Article
Radiology, Nuclear Medicine & Medical Imaging
Article-Type of This Article
Retrospective Cohort Study
Open-Access Policy of This Article
This article is an open-access article which was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/
World J Radiol. Apr 28, 2022; 14(4): 82-90 Published online Apr 28, 2022. doi: 10.4329/wjr.v14.i4.82
Decreased cross-sectional muscle area in male patients with clear cell renal cell carcinoma and peritumoral collateral vessels
Federico Greco, Bruno Beomonte Zobel, Carlo Augusto Mallio
Federico Greco, Unità Operativa Complessa Diagnostica per Immagini Territoriale Aziendale, Cittadella della Salute Azienda Sanitaria Locale di Lecce, Lecce 73100, Italy
Bruno Beomonte Zobel, Carlo Augusto Mallio, Unit of Diagnostic Imaging, Università Campus Bio-Medico di Roma, Rome 00128, Italy
Author contributions: Greco F and Mallio CA contributed equally to this work; Greco F and Mallio CA designed the research; Greco F and Mallio CA performed the research; Greco F and Mallio CA analyzed the data; Greco F, Beomonte Zobel B, and Mallio CA validated the research; Greco F and Mallio CA wrote the paper; Greco F, Beomonte Zobel B, and Mallio CA supervised the research.
Institutional review board statement: All the procedures were retrospective and agreed with the Declaration of Helsinki. CT images and data of ccRCC patients were retrieved from The Cancer Imaging Archive (TCIA). The TCIA project received approval of the Institutional Review Board. This subsequent retrospective analysis was on the publicly available, anonymized data and did not require further review due to previous protections implemented by TCIA.
Conflict-of-interest statement: The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest to disclose.
STROBE statement: The authors have read the STROBE Statement—checklist of items, and the manuscript was prepared and revised according to the STROBE Statement—checklist of items.
Open-Access: This article is an open-access article that was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: https://creativecommons.org/Licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Corresponding author: Federico Greco, MD, Doctor, Unità Operativa Complessa Diagnostica per Immagini Territoriale Aziendale, Cittadella della Salute Azienda Sanitaria Locale di Lecce, Piazza Filippo Bottazzi, Lecce 73100, Italy. federicogreco@outlook.com
Received: October 24, 2021 Peer-review started: October 24, 2021 First decision: December 10, 2021 Revised: December 15, 2021 Accepted: March 25, 2022 Article in press: March 25, 2022 Published online: April 28, 2022 Processing time: 182 Days and 21.3 Hours
Abstract
BACKGROUND
Sarcopenia is the loss of skeletal muscle mass (SMM) and is a sign of cancer cachexia. Patients with advanced renal cell carcinoma (RCC) may show cachexia.
AIM
To evaluate the amount of SMM in male clear cell RCC (ccRCC) patients with and without collateral vessels.
METHODS
In this study, we included a total of 124 male Caucasian patients divided into two groups: ccRCCa group without collateral vessels (n = 54) and ccRCCp group with collateral vessels (n = 70). Total abdominal muscle area (TAMA) was measured in both groups using a computed tomography imaging-based approach. TAMA measures were also corrected for age in order to rule out age-related effects.
RESULTS
There was a statistically significant difference between the two groups in terms of TAMA (P < 0.05) driven by a reduction in patients with peritumoral collateral vessels. The result was confirmed by repeating the analysis with values corrected for age (P < 0.05), indicating no age effect on our findings.
CONCLUSION
This study showed a decreased TAMA in ccRCC patients with peritumoral collateral vessels. The presence of peritumoral collateral vessels adjacent to ccRCC might be a fine diagnostic clue to sarcopenia.
Core Tip: Clear cell renal cell carcinoma (ccRCC) can be detected with or without peritumoral collateral vessels. These vessels have been defined as enlarged capsular veins, stimulated by tumor-related effects. The presence of peritumoral collateral vessels around ccRCC is a poorly investigated phenomenon, with unclear clinical meaning. Here, we reported a novel association between peritumoral collateral vessels and loss of skeletal muscle in patients with ccRCC. The effect was not influenced by age, supporting the concept that peritumoral collateral vessels adjacent to ccRCC should drive clinicians’ attention towards cancer cachexia.
