[Systemic treatment of renal cell carcinoma - recent update]

Renal cell cancer is the most common form of all malignant renal cancers. The most important exogenic risk factors are smoking and obesity. Most presentations are incidental and, when systemic symptoms occur they are often due to metastases. The mortality rate is still 30% in this disease. The only curative treatment option is surgery. Until recently interferon alpha and/or interleukin-2 were standard treatments in the palliative setting, but efficacy was limited. But in the last years advances could be made. Targeted therapies like sunitinib could demonstrate a significant improvement in progression free survival. Moreover, there are now treatment options even in second line palliative treatment. Nevertheless there are still enough questions to be answered: the optimal sequential therapy, how long should we treat our patients and can we combine theses targeted therapies? Studies to answer all these burning questions are already ongoing.