Radical nephrectomy (RN) was the standard treatment for renal cell carcinoma (RCC). However, recent studies have found that partial nephrectomy (PN) could achieve similar effects as radical nephrectomy, and has the advantages of less bleeding and shorter hospital stay. The choice of surgical strategies has become a concern of clinicians, which could be guided by renal score introduced by Kutikov et al Therefore, we conducted this meta‐analysis to clarify the value of renal score of determining surgical strategies and predicting complications.
The keywords “RENAL score,” “renal nephrometry score,” or “nephrometry score” were used to retrieve electronic databases for relevant literature up to Feb 2020, including PubMed, Web of Science, and the Cochrane library. Surgical strategies and complications are outcome measures. Risk ratio (RR) with 95% confidence intervals (CI) is applied to assess the effect size.
A total of 20 studies met the selection criteria for meta‐analysis. There was significant difference in RN operation rate for each subgroup (low‐moderate: RR = 3.50, 95% Cl = 2.60‐4.71, P < .001; low‐high: RR = 6.29, 95% Cl = 4.40‐9.00, P < .001; moderate‐high: RR = 1.80, 95% Cl = 1.39‐2.32, P < .001).The overall incidence of complications from high renal score group was significantly higher than that in low renal score group (low‐moderate: RR = 1.32, 95% Cl = 1.03‐1.69, P = .026; low‐high: RR = 2.45, 95% Cl = 1.48‐4.07, P = .001; moderate‐high: RR = 1.75, 95% Cl = 1.17‐2.61, P = .007).
The predictive value of renal score is unclear. We retrieved all studies on renal score and performed a meta‐analysis of surgical strategies and postoperative complications. The results show that renal score is an objective and effective tool for predicting surgical strategies and complications after PN.