[Metastatic renal cell carcinoma: therapeutic concepts for non-medicinal treatment].

Metastatic renal cell carcinoma has a poor prognosis with a median overall survival rate of approximately 2 years. The current standard medicinal therapy includes the use of tyrosine kinase inhibitors or antiangiogenic substances, such as VEGF receptor antagonists. Improvement in clinical response is to be expected when surgical tumor debulking by nephrectomy or metastasectomy is performed before medicinal therapy is started and should be considered especially in patients with a good performance status. Additionally, complete resection of solitary or at least a limited number of metastases can potentially be done with curative intent. Radiotherapy remains the standard procedure for palliative therapy of brain metastases to reduce clinical symptoms and to improve intracerebral tumor control.