Age at diagnosis is a determinant factor of renal cell carcinoma-specific survival in patients treated with...

Based on combined data for 4880 patients, 2 previous studies reported that advanced age is a predictor of increased renal cell carcinoma-specific mortality (RCC-SM). We explored the effect of age in cubic spline analyses to identify the age groups with the most elevated risk for renal cell carcinoma (RCC).

Our study included 3595 patients from 14 European centres who had partial or radical nephrectomies. We used the Kaplan-Meier method to compile life tables, and we performed Cox regression analyses to assess RCC-SM. Covariates included age at diagnosis, sex, TNM (tumour, node, metastasis) stage, tumour size, Fuhrman grade, symptom classification and histological subtype.

Age ranged from 10 to 89 (mean 63, median 67) years. The median duration of follow-up was 2.9 years. The median survival for the cohort was 13.4 years. Stage distribution was as follows: 1915 patients (53.3%) had stage I disease, 388 (10.8%) had stage II, 895 (24.9%) had stage III and 397 (11.0%) had stage IV disease. In multivariate analyses, we coded age at diagnosis as a cubic spline, and it achieved independent predictor status (p < 0.001). The risk of RCC-SM was lowest among patients younger than 50 years. We observed an increase in RCC-SM until the age of 50, at which point the level of risk reached a plateau. We observed a second increase among patients aged 75-89 years. We found similar patterns when we stratified patients according to the 2002 American Joint Committee on Cancer (AJCC) stages.

The effect of age shows prognostic significance and indicates that follow-up and possibly secondary treatments might need to be adjusted according to the age of the patient.