Adding surgery in metastatic kidney cancer could improve survival

One of the stories out of the ASCO Genitourinary Cancers Symposium earlier this year was that patients with metastatic kidney cancer may benefit from surgery in addition to biological treatments. Before targeted therapies, patients with metastatic renal cell carcinoma were treated with surgery and interferon. With the advent of targeted therapy, it's unknown whether surgery is still beneficial. The retrospective study examined patients treated with a targeted agent--most patients were treated with Sutent (sunitinib) or Nexavar (sorafenib). Because the study was not a randomized prospective study, patients chose whether to proceed with surgery, and about 60 percent elected to undergo a nephrectomy (surgical removal of the kidney). You can read the abstract here. Patients who had surgery lived longer than patients who did not have surgery (20.6 months versus 9.5 months). However, because those who elected to have surgery were in better health, researchers had to adjust the data, which ultimately came out to a 40 percent survival benefit. This effect was apparent in patients who had longer life expectancy and good prognostic factors. Researchers noted that patients who had poor prognostic factors, such as low blood counts, did not appear to benefit from surgery. Daniel Yick Chin Heng, presenting author of the study, said these results confirm a previous, but much smaller, study. "Cytoreductive nephrectomy may extend overall survival; however, not all patients should have it," he said. "Patients with a longer estimated survival can potentially stand to gain a lot more benefit from cytoreductive nephrectomy." Two phase 3 randomized studies will, hopefully, answer more questions in which patients would benefit from surgery.