Collecting duct carcinoma of the renal medulla presenting with paraplegia

Bellini's duct carcinoma: A report of two cases and a review of the literature

Bellini's duct carcinoma (BDC) is a rare and aggressive variant of renal cell carcinoma that possesses an extremely poor prognosis. The greater the grade or stage of disease, the poorer the prognosis tends to be. This study presents two cases of BDC; one case of low grade BDC and one case of high grade BDC in a 47-year-old male and 74-year-old female, respectively. The 47-year-old male patient presented with painless gross hematuria, which had lasted for 3 weeks and subsequently underwent purely laparoscopic nephroureterectomy. After 4-years of follow-up, the patient remained disease-free. By contrast, a right renal tumor was identified in the 74-year-old female patient during a routine examination. Radical right nephrectomy and lymph node dissection were performed, however, 10 months after surgery the patient succumbed due to wide-spread metastasis. The two cases reported in the present study not only represent excellent examples of the disease spectrum, but also act as a reminder of the possibility of detecting BDC in an early stage of disease. Therefore, the epidemiology of BDC has been discussed, and the aggressive growth pattern of BDC has been presented in terms of signs, symptoms and imaging examinations, including ultrasonography, computed tomography (CT), angiography and single photon emission CT, in the early stage of disease.