Prognostic factors for survival in metastatic renal cell carcinoma: update 2008.

A variety of prognostic factor models to predict survival in patients with metastatic renal cell carcinoma have been developed. Diverse populations of patients with variable treatments have been used for these analyses. A variety of clinical, pathologic, and molecular factors have been studied, but current models use predominantly easily obtained clinical factors. These approaches are reviewed, and current approaches to further refine and develop these techniques are reviewed. (c) 2009 American Cancer Society.