Elderly patients with metastatic renal cell carcinoma (RCC) have a three-month survival advantage with targeted therapies compared to older treatments, a new study finds.
Researchers from the University of Pennsylvania Perelman School of Medicine analyzed 13 years of data on Medicare patients to find that targeted therapies offered new treatment options to elderly and medically complex patients. The new treatments include immunotherapies that are less toxic and more beneficial, according to senior author Jalpa A. Doshi, Ph.D., a professor of medicine in the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania.
“RCC is a cancer where people can often try other treatment options if the first one isn’t effective, so even small gains may mean that a person might live long enough to try the next innovation,” Doshi said.
In the study, half of the targeted therapy group died within nine months, but 10% of people survived longer than 47 months. Among that group, targeted therapies offered an 11-month survival advantage over older treatments, the researchers reported in JAMA Network Open.
Kidney cancer is most common in older people – the average age of diagnosis is 64, according to the American Cancer Society.
