Prognostic models and factors for patients with renal-cell carcinoma: a survey on their use among urologists

To assess the use of prognostic factors and models in renal-cell carcinoma (RCC) and to gain insight in the motivations precluding prognosis estimation and the use of prognosticators. A questionnaire was sent to 110 urologists involved in the Clinical Research Office of the Endourological Society (CROES) Global Renal Mass Study. Frequencies were gathered using descriptive statistics. The majority of the 86 responders worked in a university hospital in Europe. Most of the urologists (97.7%) used the tumor-node-metastasis (TNM) classification, and 44% performed prognosis estimations in all patients. The main reason not to estimate prognosis was lack of accuracy (20.9%) and of additional benefit (11.6%). In addition, clinical, laboratory, or pathologic factors were used by 89.5% of the urologists and biomarkers by 16.3%. Preoperative models were used by 20.9%, postoperative models by 38.4%, and metastatic models by 38.4%. The Raj and Motzer models were the most used in preoperative and metastatic settings, while no predominance among the different postoperative models was seen. The most important reasons to skip the use of models were "lack of additional value" and "lack of familiarity" reported by 30.2% and 27.9% of the responders, respectively. The TNM is the mainstay for assessing prognosis in RCC. Our data indicate that penetration of prognostic systems is, at most, moderate, suggesting limited use outside original developmental settings. On the contrary, clinical, laboratory, and pathologic factors are used by almost all urologists for prognosis estimations. The most important reason not to use models is the lack of additional value.