Metastatic renal cell carcinoma is a devastating disease. There are roughly 20-25,000 new cases per year in the United States and it is increasing for some reason. For patients who present with mRCC their median overall survival is only about 15 months and 90% of the patients won’t live 2 years. It is quite an aggressive disease.

Renal cell carcinoma comes in 3 different grades. There are patients that present with favourable risk, meaning that they have none of the 6 risk factors that physicians look at to determine the severity of disease. If you have favourable risk you have a reasonably good prognosis – the median overall survival is 43 months.

If you have 1 or 2 of the risk factors you are classified as intermediate risk and the survival drops down to only about 22.5 months.

If you are poor risk, meaning you have 3 or more of the 6 risk factors then the survival is only about 7.8 months.