Transplantation in patients with a history of renal cell carcinoma: long-term results and clinical considerations.

We report four cases of renal transplantation after prior incidental removal of renal cell carcinomas. Follow-up periods ranged from 21 months to 8 years. Our experience provides the first long-term follow-up of such cases and indicates that the overall prognosis is favorable when asymptomatic renal adenocarcinomas are removed prior to renal transplantation. The period between nephrectomy and renal transplantation ranged from 8 hours to 30 months. Three patients had prolonged tumor-free survival, and one died from a widely disseminated second adenocarcinoma 21 months after transplantation.