REEVALUATION OF THE 1997 TNM CLASSIFICATION FOR RENAL CELL CARCINOMA: T1 AND T2 CUTOFF POINT AT 4.5 RATHER THAN 7 CM. BETTER CORRELATES WITH CLINICAL OUTCOME

Abstract

Our data imply that the current cutoff point of 7 cm. between stages T1 and T2 tumors is too high. Lowering the cutoff to 4.5 cm. resulted in better discriminatory power of the TNM classification in our dataset. This observation should be further validated by external data.