MORPHOLOGICAL AND CYTOGENETIC ASPECTS OF RENAL-CELL CARCINOMA

The medical history of 'hypernephroma' is characterized by errors which arose from the notion of 'disseminated adrenocortical foci'. Its origin from tubule epithelia of the kidney is on the other hand to be substantiated both in morphological and in immunological terms. Many attempts to arrive at a clinically serviceable establishment of the prognosis on the basis of the morphology have proved to be inadequate for the large group of the classical forms. Only the sarcomatous tumors and the oncocytes could be classified prognostically with sufficient certainty. An attempt is made in the present study to propagate the idea that besides the histogenetic, morphologically more or less tangible characteristics, molecular biological features are also important for the biological behavior of a tumor and should be used to appraise the prognosis.