Background: Relatively little is known with certainty about the status and role of p53 or MDM2 in predicting prognosis and survival of renal cell carcinoma. The present study aimed to determine the value of P53 and MDM2 over-expression, alone and simultaneously, to predict five-year survival of patients with kidney cancer in Iran. Materials and Methods: Patients with kidney cancer referred to Hasheminejad Kidney Center between 2007 and 2009, underwent radical nephrectomy and had pathology reports of clear cell, papillary or chromophobe renal cell carcinoma were included in our cohort study. Other histological types of renal cell carcinoma were not included. The patients with missed, incomplete or poor quality paraffin blocks were also excluded. Overall ninety one patients met the inclusion and exclusion criteria. To assess the histopathological features of the tumor, immunohistochemical (IHC) staining of formalin fixed, paraffin-embedded tumor samples were performed. The five-year survival was determined by the patients' medical files and telephone following-up. Results: In total, 1.1 of all samples were revealed to be positive for P53. Also, 20.8 of all samples were revealed to be positive for MDM2.The patients were all followed for 5 years. In this regard, 5-year mortality was 30.5 and thus 5-year survival was 85.3. According to the Cox proportional hazard analysis, positive P53 marker was only predictor for patients' 5-year survival that the presence of positive p53 increased the risk for long-term mortality up to 2.8 times (HR=2.798, 95CI: 1.176-6.660, P=0.020). However, the presence of MDM2 could not predict long-term mortality. In this regard, analysis by the ROC curve showed a limited role for predicting long-term survival by confirming P53 positivity (AUC=0.610, 95CI: 0.471-.750, P=0.106). The best cutoff point for P53 to predict mortality was 0.5 yielding a low sensitivity (32.0) but a high specificity (97.9). In similar analysis, measurement of MDM2 positivity could not predict mortality (AUC=0.449, 95CI: 0.316-.583, P=0.455). Conclusions: The simultaneous presence of both P53 and MDM2 markers in our population is a rare phenomenon and the presence of these markers may not predict long-term survival in patients who undergoing radical nephrectomy
