Dr. Tsao on Improving Outcomes in RCC

Che-Kai Tsao, MD, medical director of the Ruttenberg Treatment Center at the Tisch Cancer Institute of Mount Sinai Hospital and an associate professor of medicine, hematology, and medical oncology at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, shares strategies to improve outcomes in renal cell carcinoma (RCC).

Overall, 3 areas should be considered when attempting to improveoutcomes for patients with regional disease, says Tsao. First, it is important to determine the disease can be better characterized.Developing an understanding of who to treat and who not to treat is also necessary. Some of the strategies to do this can include better imaging and, potentially, the use of biomarkers, which is not currently a standard; that is still an area of active investigation. Some of the prediction models that currently exist might also be used to understand which patients recur or not.

The second strategy would be to consider whether better surgery could be performed, adds Tsao. Now, routine lymph node dissection in patients with regional disease is not considered a standard. However, studies show that by performing a lymph node dissection, one can better understand whether patients truly have disease in their lymph nodes; that information could help determine who is at a higher risk for recurrence.

Third, it has to do with effective systemic therapy, says Tsao. The treatment landscape is changing and many exciting combination therapies have emerged, both in immunotherapy as well as targeted therapy, concludes Tsao.