Extracranial Palliative Radiation Therapy for Renal Cell Carcinoma

Area of Science:

• Oncology
• Radiation Oncology
• Medical Physics

Background:

• Symptom management is crucial for patients with renal cell carcinoma (RCC).
• Radiation therapy (RT) is a key modality for managing symptoms in metastatic RCC.
• Understanding RT efficacy across diverse populations is essential.

Purpose of the Study:

• To evaluate the efficacy of radiation therapy (RT) for symptom management in an ethnically diverse patient population with renal cell carcinoma (RCC) metastases.
• To identify factors influencing symptom alleviation following RT.
• To compare the effectiveness of different RT techniques.

Main Methods:

• Retrospective review of 240 patients with symptomatic extracranial RCC metastases treated with RT (2011-2022).
• Symptoms categorized as pain, neurologic, respiratory, and GI/GU bleeding.
• Time to symptom alleviation assessed during treatment and follow-up; statistical analyses performed.

Main Results:

• Symptom improvement observed in 84.0% of patients at 6 months.
• Pain improved in 84.6%, respiratory in 69.9%, neurologic in 88.6%, and GI/GU bleeding in 37.5%.
• Median time to overall and pain alleviation was 1.6 months; conventional RT showed faster symptom relief than stereotactic RT (P < .001).

Conclusions:

• Stereotactic and conventional RT are effective for symptom palliation in metastatic RCC.
• Both RT modalities offer significant symptom relief for patients.
• Conventional RT demonstrated a faster onset of symptom alleviation.