Surgical metastasectomy for metastatic renal cell carcinoma in the era of targeted and immune therapy: a narrative review

Metastatic renal cell carcinoma (mRCC) still harbours a big propensity for future metastasis. Combinations of immune and targeted therapies are currently the cornerstone of management with a less clear role for surgical metastasectomy (SM).

We performed a narrative review of literature searching for the available evidence on the yield of surgical metastasectomy in the era of targeted and immune therapies. The review consisted of a PubMed search of relevant articles using the Mesh terms:” renal cell carcinoma”, “surgery», «resection”, “metastasectomy”, “molecular targeted therapies”, “immune checkpoint inhibitors” alone or in combination.

In this review, we exposed the place of surgical metastasectomy within a multimodal treatment algorithm for mRCC Also, we detailed the patient selection criteria that yielded the best results when SM was performed. Finally, we discussed the feasibility and advantages of SM per organ site.

Our work was able to show that SM could be proposed as a consolidation treatment to excise residual lesions that were deemed unresectable prior to a combination of systemic therapies. Contrastingly, it can be proposed as an upfront treatment, leaving systemic therapies as an alternative in case of future relapse. However, patient selection regarding their performance status, metastatic sites, number of lesions and tumorous characteristics is of paramount importance.