Smoking Cessation After Diagnosis of Kidney Cancer Is Associated With Reduced Risk of Mortality and Cancer Progression: A Prospective Cohort Study

Abstract

PURPOSE To investigate whether postdiagnosis smoking cessation may affect the risk of death and disease progression in patients with renal cell carcinoma (RCC) who smoked at the time of diagnosis. METHODS Two hundred twelve patients with primary RCC were recruited between 2007 and 2016 from the Urological Department in N.N. Blokhin National Medical Research Center of Oncology, Moscow, Russia. Upon enrollment, a structured questionnaire was completed, and the patients were followed annually through 2020 to repeatedly assess their smoking status and disease progression. Survival probabilities and hazards for all-cause and cancer-specific mortality and disease progression were investigated using extended the Kaplan-Meier method, time-dependent Cox proportional hazards regression, and Fine-Gray competing-risk models. RESULTS Patients were followed for a median of 8.2 years. During this time, 110 cases of disease progression, 100 total deaths, and 77 cancer-specific deaths were recorded. Eighty-four patients (40%) quit smoking after diagnosis. The total person-years at risk for this analysis were 748.2 for continuing smoking and 611.2 for quitting smoking periods. At 5 years of follow-up, both overall survival (85% v 61%) and progression-free survival (80% v 57%) rates were higher during the quitting than continuing smoking periods (both P < .001). In the multivariable time-dependent models, quitting smoking was associated with lower risk of all-cause mortality (hazard ratio [HR], 0.51; 95% CI, 0.31 to 0.85), disease progression (HR, 0.45; 95% CI, 0.29 to 0.71), and cancer-specific mortality (HR, 0.54; 95% CI, 0.31 to 0.93). The beneficial effect of quitting smoking was evident across all subgroups, including light smokers versus moderate-heavy smokers and those with early-stage versus late-stage tumors. CONCLUSION Quitting smoking after RCC diagnosis may significantly improve survival and reduce the risk of disease progression and cancer mortality among patients who smoke.