Five-year survival after surgical treatment for kidney cancer: a population-based competing risk analysis.

BACKGROUND Kidney cancer's rising incidence is largely attributable to the increased detection of small renal masses. Although surgery rates have paralleled this incidence trend, mortality continues to rise, calling into question the necessity of surgery for all patients with renal masses. Using a population-based cohort, a competing risk analysis was performed to estimate patient survival after surgery for kidney cancer, as a function of patient age and tumor size at diagnosis. METHODS With data from the Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results Program (1983-2002), a cohort was assembled of 26,618 patients with surgically treated, local-regional kidney cancer. Patients were sorted into 20 age-tumor size categories and the numbers of patients that were alive, dead from kidney cancer, and dead from other causes were tabulated. Poisson regression models were fitted to obtain estimates of cancer-specific and competing-cause mortality. RESULTS Age-specific kidney cancer mortality was stable across all size strata but varied inversely with tumor size. Patients with the smallest tumors enjoyed the lowest cancer-specific mortality (5% for massesor=70 years) was 28.2% (95% confidence interval [CI]: 25.9%-30.8%), irrespective of tumor size. CONCLUSIONS Despite surgical therapy, competing-cause mortality for patients with renal masses rises with increasing patient age. After 5 years, one-third of elderly patients (>or=70 years) will die from other causes, suggesting the need for prospective studies to evaluate the role of active surveillance as an initial therapeutic approach for some small renal masses.