Estimating the age of renal tumors

TL;DR

This paper introduces a Bayesian approach to estimate the age of renal tumors based on their size, utilizing tumor growth models from existing data to provide median age and confidence intervals.

Contribution

The study develops a novel Bayesian method for tumor age estimation using growth models, offering a quantitative tool for clinical assessment.

Findings

Median age of a 5 cm tumor is 20 years

Interquartile range for tumor age is 16-23 years

90% confidence interval for tumor age is 11-30 years

Abstract

We present a Bayesian method for estimating the age of a renal tumor given its size. We use a model of tumor growth based on published data from observations of untreated tumors. We find, for example, that the median age of a 5 cm tumor is 20 years, with interquartile range 16-23 and 90% confidence interval 11-30 years.