Treatment of metastatic renal cell carcinoma in older patients: A network meta-analysis.

INTRODUCTION: More than half of patients diagnosed with renal cell carcinoma (RCC) are age 65 or older. However, older patients are often unable to meet eligibility criteria for clinical trial enrollment due to multiple factors, such as comorbidities and polypharmacy, which leads to under-representation of this population in clinical trials. Given this, efficacy data from the registration trials may not apply to older patients. Our objective was to evaluate the efficacy of first-line and salvage-line treatment in older patients, and compare efficacy between older and younger patients with metastatic RCC (mRCC). METHODS: Pivotal phase three clinical trials for first-line and salvage-line treatments were included if they reported overall survival (OS) or progression-free survival (PFS) results stratified by age (