Renal cell carcinoma sharply captured by imaging technology at an early stage in a hemodialysis patient: Usefulness of noninvasive monochrome superb microvascular imaging.

Abstract

It has been drawing much attention that type 2 diabetes mellitus is closely associated with increased incidence of numerous cancers and their poor prognosis. Consequently, malignancy has been recently recognized as one of diabetic complications in addition to various conventional complications. Furthermore, it is well known that the prevalence of renal cell carcinoma (RCC) is drastically increased in hemodialysis (HD) patients. Therefore, screening of RCCs in HD patients is a very important and urgent issue as there are no highly sensitive tumor markers for RCCs. Monochrome superb microvascular imaging (mSMI) is a relatively new Doppler ultrasound technique and is useful especially when evaluating very slow blood flow state, because this allows for imaging microvessels with low velocity in the absence of a contrast agent. Thus, mSMI might be also useful when contrast enhancement is not obvious on CT and/or contrast-enhanced ultrasonography using perflubutane or contrast agents are contraindicated. Moreover, it has been reported that mSMI could effectively detect vascularity of renal malignant tumor than benign renal mass in nondialysis patients. We propose that mSMI of ultrasonography could become one of the very useful methods for detecting RCCs at an early stage with high sensitivity in HD patients.

• Authors: Rie Ohsawa, Hiroyuki Kadoya, Atsushi Obata, Takahiro Obata, Atsuyuki Tokuyama, Tamaki Sasaki, Naoki Kashihara, Hideaki Kaneto
• Journal: Hemodialysis international. International Symposium on Home Hemodialysis (Hemodial Int) (Mar 29 2021) ISSN: 1542-4758 [Electronic] Canada
• PMID: 33783107 (Publication Type: Case Reports)
• Copyright: © 2021 The Authors. Hemodialysis International published by Wiley Periodicals LLC on behalf of International Society for Hemodialysis.