Trends in RCC Incidence
David Aggen, MD, PhD discusses trends in renal cell carcinoma (RCC) incidence.
Matthew Fowler: Hello, and welcome to this Contemporary CancerNetwork® OncView™ program titled "Metastatic Renal Cell Carcinoma: Safety and Efficacy of Available Treatment Options and Considerations for Patient Management." I'm Matthew Fowler, associate editor with CancerNetwork®. We have with us today Dr David Aggen, medical oncologist at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York City. Thank you for joining us today, Dr Aggen. Let's get started.
David Aggen, MD, PhD: Thanks for that kind intro, Matt. Happy to speak with you today.
Matthew Fowler: Our first segment focuses on a background of RCC [renal cell carcinoma], so let's set that up. Could you comment on just general RCC incidents; is it increasing, decreasing? Do you have any thoughts on the reasons behind a change that you see?
David Aggen, MD, PhD: Certainly. I think over the past several decades, we've seen a steady increase in the incidents of kidney cancer. In part, that's because our imaging modalities have improved, and as we've started to do CT scans for other reasons, we're incidentally finding small kidney masses. I think that has led to a general trend towards an increase in the number of cases of kidney cancer that we're seeing. We're catching the disease in an earlier state. I also think that there's been an improvement in our diagnostic ability in terms of catching these cancers earlier on and that's sort of led to earlier recognition of this disease entity.
Transcript edited for clarity.
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