Ablative therapies versus partial nephrectomy for small renal masses – A systematic review and meta-analysis
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Background High quality studies and reviews on the management of small renal masses (SRM) are lacking. This review aims to compare oncological outcomes in patients undergoing ablative therapies (AT) or partial nephrectomy (PN) for T1a or T1b SRM. Material and methods Medline, EMBASE, Cochrane CENTRAL and conference proceedings were searched on the 15th July 2020 for comparative studies respective to our research question. The ROBINS-I tool and the GRADE approach were used to assess any risk of biases and certainty of evidence in the included studies. The review is registered on PROSPERO. Results 1,748 records were retrieved. 32 observational studies and 1 RCT integrating 74,946 patients were included. Patients undergoing AT patients are significantly older than PN patients (MD 5.70, 95%CI 3.83–7.58). In T1a patients, AT patients have significantly worse overall survival (HR 1.64, 95%CI 1.39–1.95). Local recurrence-free survival is similar with PN in patients with longer than five-years follow up (HR 1.54, 95%CI 0.88–2.71). AT patients also have similar cancer-specific survival (CSS), metastasis-free survival, disease-free survival, significantly fewer post-operative complications (RR 0.72, 95%CI 0.55–0.94), and a smaller decline in estimated glomerular filtration rate post-operatively (MD: -7.42, 95%CI -13.1 to −1.70) compared to those undergoing PN. Evidence contradicts in T1b patients for oncological outcomes. Conclusions AT have similar long-term oncological durability; lower rates of complications and superior kidney function preservation compared to PN. Given the low quality of evidence, AT is a reasonable alternative to PN in frail and co-morbid patients. Long-term high-quality studies are needed to confirm the potential benefits of AT, especially in T1b patients. PROSPERO Registration CRD42020199099. Highlights Ablative therapies and partial nephrectomy result in comparable long-term oncological outcomes. Ablative therapies have significantly less post-operative complications compared to partial nephrectomy. Renal function preservation is significantly lower in patients undergoing Fig. 1 ablative therapies compared to partial nephrectomy. Standardized reporting and randomised evidences are needed to obtain high-quality evidence.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.012 | 0.026 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.019 | 0.031 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.006 | 0.006 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.003 | 0.002 |
| Open science | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.002 | 0.002 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.004 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".