Societal costs after renal cancer surgery.

512 Background: The hospital costs of radical or partial nephrectomy for treatment of confirmed or suspected renal cell carcinoma have been well described. We sought to estimate a previously unreported societal cost of renal cancer surgery by assessing surgery-related time off work (TOW) taken by patients and their caretakers. Methods: To a cohort of 315 subjects enrolled in an IRB-approved prospective renal quality-of-life study who underwent radical or partial nephrectomy at our institution, we administered an occupational survey asking subjects to recall employment status, physical demands at work (sedentary, moderate activity, heavy lifting), income by tax bracket, surgery-related TOW (in days), and caretaker assistance. We excluded subjects who underwent cytoreductive nephrectomy. We estimated potential wages lost using individual income and TOW, and used logistic regression to assess for factors predictive of TOW > 30 days. Results: Of the 108 subjects who responded to the survey, 69 were employed a...