ORLANDO—Shorter times to recurrence of renal cell carcinoma (RCC) following surgery are associated with an increased risk of death from the disease, researchers concluded from a study presented at the American Urological Association 2014 annual meeting.
Malte Rieken, MD, of Weill Cornell Medical College in New York, and colleagues analyzed retrospective data from 331 RCC patients who had disease recurrence after radical nephrectomy (307 patients) or partial nephrectomy (24 patients). Of these, 232 (70%) were male and 99 (30%) were female. The median age of the cohort was 62 years at the time of surgery. The median time to recurrence from nephrectomy was 1.2 years.
Of the 331 recurrences, 63 (19%) were local and 268 (81%) were distant. With a median follow-up time of 17 months for survivors, 203 patients died from RCC and 36 died from other causes. The 1-year risk of cancer-specific death was 48% and 23% for patients whose disease recurred at 3 months and 3 years, respectively.
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“The inclusion of time to recurrence into risk stratification could help patient counseling and decision making regarding adjuvant and salvage treatment,” the authors concluded.
Additionally, the study found that female patients had a significant 42% increased risk of cancer-specific death than male patients. Distant recurrence was associated with a significant 2.5 times increased risk of cancer-specific death compared with local recurrence.
