Cardiovascular toxicity following anti-angiogenic therapy in persons over age 65 with advanced renal cell carcinoma.

4544 Background: Sunitinib and sorafenib are oral vascular endothelial growth factor receptor (VEGFR) tyrosine kinase inhibitors (TKIs) approved for treatment of patients with renal cell carcinoma (RCC) in 2005-2006. We conducted a population-based observational cohort study on the cardiovascular effects of VEGFR TKI therapy in elderly RCC patients. Methods: We analyzed patients with RCC diagnosed from 2000-2009 ages 66 and older using data from the Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results (SEER)-Medicare database. We examined the incidence of cardiovascular adverse events through December 2010 including congestive heart failure and cardiomyopathy (CHF/CM), acute myocardial infarction (AMI), stroke, and cardiovascular deaths. We performed Cox-proportional hazard model to estimate the risk of these events associated with sunitinib or sorafenib adjusting for age, sex, comorbidity, and use of other systemic therapy. Results: A total of 171 out of 670 patients who received either sunitinib or sorafenib had...