Efficacy of autologous blood transfusion in patients with renal cell carcinoma undergoing radical nephrectomy.

Predeposit autologous boood transfusion was performed in 40 patients with renal cell carcinoma who underwent radical nephrectomy between January 1989 and June 1994. No homologous blood was transfused in 31 cases (77.5%) of which 27 cases (81.8%) prepared for predeposit autologus bloos ≥600ml. The prognosis of 20 patients with the autologous blood transfusion until December 1991 was compared with that of 25 patients with homologous blood transfusion during the same period. Recurrence-free rate of autologous blood transfused patients was significantly (p<0.05) lower than that of homologous blood transfused cases. There was no significant difference of survival rate among autologous and homologous blood transfused cases. Patients transfused with homologous whole blood had significantly (p<0.05) poorer survival than autologous blood transfused cases, in addition to significantly (p<0.01) higher tumor recurrence.These results suggested that autologous blood tranfusion had a potential to improve the prognosis of renal cell carcinoma.