Long-term survival determinants in Wilms' tumor.

This is a retrospective report of 54 patients with the diagnosis of Wilms' tumor treated at Roswell Park Memorial Institute from 1946 to 1977. The age ranged from 1 month to 57 years with a mean of 7.2 years and a median age of 5 years. An analysis of the survival results showed that patients continued to die of disease until 66 months post-diagnosis, making the 5-year survival a much better evaluation criterion for this group than the traditional 2-year survival. Males fared significantly better in this series (p less than 0.01). This was not due to detectable differences in age group, or histology. While the older age group (more than 15 years old) showed a somewhat better survival outlook for the first 2 years post-diagnosis, this difference became negligible at 5 years post-diagnosis.