Renal cell carcinoma can have solitary adrenal metastasis years or even decades after resection of the primary tumor. The difficulty in distinguishing an adrenocortical adenoma from a solitary metastasis of a renal cell carcinoma prompted us to study 10 adrenal adenomas, 11 primary renal cell carcinomas, and three renal cell carcinomas metastatic to the adrenal gland by immunohistochemical stains and flow cytometry to determine if these techniques could help make the distinction. Immunohistochemical staining was performed for detection of cytokeratin, vimentin, and epithelial membrane antigen (EMA). Cytokeratin, vimentin, and EMA were detected in 10/11, 9/11, and 11/11 primary renal cell carcinomas, respectively, and 1/3, 2/3, and 3/3 metastatic renal cell carcinomas, respectively. All cases of adrenal adenoma were negative for the three antigens. DNA content analysis by flow cytometry showed no evidence of an abnormal DNA stemline in any of the cases except one renal cell carcinoma. We conclude that staining for EMA is consistently strongly positive in primary and metastatic renal cell carcinomas and consistently negative in adrenal adenomas, proving to be a useful distinguishing marker. Cytokeratin and vimentin, although uniformly absent in adrenal adenomas, are variably and often only weakly positive in renal cell carcinomas, and therefore of less help in making the distinction. Flow cytometry analysis has no discriminatory value in these cases.