Angela Smith, MD MS and Matthew Milowsky, MD have published an editorial in the Journal of Clinical Oncology entitled “Is Extending surveillance guidelines for renal cell carcinoma without understanding patient outcomes putting the cart before the horse?” The editorial accompanies an article which evaluates the ability of current surveillance guidelines to capture RCC recurrences and assesses the duration of surveillance required to capture 90-100% of recurrences. Drs. Smith and Milowsky discuss whether modifying existing surveillance guidelines is warranted and highlight several considerations including the generalizability of results, current characterization of low- and high-risk RCC, and future role of genomics in improving risk stratification and design of surveillance guidelines.
