Renal tumors in unselected forensic post-mortem material.

The frequency of clinically evident renal tumors is increasing, due to an actual increase in incidence, but also due to an improvement in detection methods. The aim of the present study was to analyze the incidence of renal tumors in an unselected autopsy series. A search for renal tumors was conducted based on the autopsy reports from the Department of Forensic Medicine. The slides were reviewed and reclassified according to current criteria. Among 14,904 autopsies, 80 renal tumors were found. The most frequent tumor types were clear cell carcinomas (41%), papillary carcinomas (18%) and cortical adenomas (19%). There were 66 males and 14 females. The average age was 57.83 for males and 62.86 for females. The characteristics of the study group were not exactly identical but similar to other autopsy series, and significantly different from surgical series.