At the 2022 European International Kidney Cancer Symposium (EIKCS) in Antwerp, Belgium at the weekend the real world use of immunotherapies and their effect on survival on people with metastatic renal cell carcinoma (RCC) was discussed.

Because so few people are able to enrol in clinical trials, real world evidence is important to look at the use of immunotherapies within the community. This study used data from electronic health records to compare survival among patients who were treated with immunotherapy and those who weren’t.

There were 423 patients in the study. Overall, 71.5% of patients were treated and 28.5% of patients were not treated. Of these, 32.6% were treated with immunotherapy and 67.4% were not. Most immunotherapy treatments were first or second treatments.

People treated with immunotherapy tended to be younger and fitter, and more likely to have favourable risk disease compared to those not treated with immunotherapy. Immunotherapy treatment resulted in an average overall survival time of 34.2 months compared to 11.3 months for those not treated with immunotherapy.

This study provides important real world evidence of the use of immunotherapies and adds to the information collected from phase 3 clinical trials..

Read more in UroToday here