Background: Targeted therapies improve survival in metastatic renal cell carcinoma (mRCC). However, survival patterns can be divergent, and patients at the 2 extremes of the survival spectrum need to be characterized.
Patients and methods: Data from 2161 patients included in the International mRCC Database Consortium (IMDC) were analyzed. We identified patients on the basis of their duration of survival. Long-term survival (LTS) was defined as overall survival (OS) of ≥ 4 years, and short-term survival (STS) was defined as OS of ≤ 6 months from the start of targeted therapy. Baseline characteristics, including demographic, clinicopathologic, and laboratory data, were compared between LTS and STS. Treatment response by the RECIST criteria was summarized for the 2 survival groups.
Results: A total of 152 patients experienced LTS and 218 experienced STS. Adverse clinical and laboratory prognostic factors previously described in the IMDC prognostic model were significantly more frequent in the STS group (P < .0001). In the LTS group, 138 patients (91%) had nonprogressive disease (non-PD) as best response to first-line targeted therapy, and 56 (60%) of 94 patients who received second-line therapy had non-PD. In the STS group, only 51 patients (23%) had non-PD on first-line therapy. None of 21 the patients who received second-line therapy had non-PD as best response. In LTS, the median duration of therapy was 23.6 months (range 0.4 to 81.8+ months) for first-line therapy and 11.5 months (range 0.6 to 45.7 months) for second-line therapy, compared to 2.0 and 0.8 months for the STS group, respectively.
Conclusion: Baseline prognostic criteria and absence of PD after first and second-line targeted therapy may characterize long-term survival.
Keywords: Long-term survival; Overall survival; Primary refractory disease; Prognostic factors; Renal cell carcinoma; Targeted therapies.
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