Analysis and Prediction of the Survival Trends of Patients with Clear-Cell Renal Cell Carcinoma: A Model-Based Period Analysis, 2001-2015

BACKGROUND: Clear-cell renal cell carcinoma (ccRCC) is one of the most common malignant tumors worldwide whose poor prognosis results in a serious disease burden on patients. The changing trend of the long-term relative survival rates (RSRs) of patients with ccRCC was analyzed in this study to evaluate their treatment results over a 15-year period. METHODS: This study is a retrospective study, which assessed and predicted the 1-, 3-, and 5-year survival rates of patients with ccRCC during 2001-2005, 2006-2010, 2011-2015, and 2016-2020 using data extracted from the Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results (SEER) database. Period analysis was used in this study to analyze the data from the SEER database and to assess survival differences according to age, sex, race, and socioeconomic status (SES) during the 15-year study period by comparing Kaplan-Meier curves. RESULTS: During 2001-2015, the 5-year RSR of patients with ccRCC increased from 78.4% to 83.0%, and the generalized linear model predicted that the 5-year RSR increased to 85.7% during 2016-2020. The RSR of patients with ccRCC differed significantly with SES, race, sex, and age. Compared with male patients, the survival advantage of female patients decreased as their age increased. The RSR of all patients with ccRCC was also lower in patients with a lower SES and of black race. CONCLUSION: This study found an improvement in the RSR of patients with ccRCC during 2001-2020. Understanding the change trend of the survival rate of patients with ccRCC is helpful to improve the design of clinical trials. It also provides basic data and a scientific basis for evaluating the harm of ccRCC on the health of affected patients and the effect of cancer prevention, and developing cancer prevention plans.