Predicting survival of patients with metastatic renal cell carcinoma.

The relationship between pretreatment clinical features and survival was studied from patients treated on clinical trials for metastatic renal cell carcinoma (RCC) at the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center. The primary analysis was performed on 670 patients treated with cytokines or chemotherapy, from which a multivariate model was derived to predict survival. Studies which followed addressed: (1) the survival of patients given interferon-alpha as first-line therapy; (2) a comparison of survival for patients treated with chemotherapy versus cytokine therapy; and (3) survival of patients with non-clear cell histology. Prospective identification of patients more likely to benefit from cytokine therapy is important as a stratification factor in phase III trials, and in risk-directed therapy.