Researchers from Memorial Sloan Kettering have reported that the proportion of patients with metastatic renal cell cancer with favorable risk features has increased in recent years compared with previous years. The details of this study appeared in an early online publication on November 17, 2009 in Cancer.[1]
The current study looked at risk factors in 789 patients with metastatic renal cell carcinoma treated between 1975 and 2007. These patients were categorized into favorable, intermediate, and poor risk, based on five pretreatment features. The median age of the entire group was 59 years (20-82). These patients were divided into the following six groups, based on year of treatment:
- 1975-1980
- 1981-1985
- 1986-1990
- 1991-1995
- 1996-2001
- 2001-2007
These authors observed that median survival increased from 0.43 years in the 1975-1980 cohort to 1.5 years in the 2001-2007 cohort. Patients with poor-risk features made up 44% of patients treated from 1975-1980 compared with 13% in the 2001-2007 group. Patients with favorable risk features increased from 0% in the 1975-1980 cohort to 49% in the 2001-2007 cohort. The intermediate-risk group remained the same throughout the study period at 50%.
Comments: These authors concluded: “These shifts have direct consequences for data analysis, interpretation of metastatic RCC trends, and drug development.”
Reference:
[1] Patil S, Ishill N, Deluca J, et al. Stage migration and increasing proportion of favorable-prognosis metastatic renal cell carcinoma patients: implications for clinical trial design and interpretation. Cancer [early online publication]. November 17, 2009.
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