Kidney cancer is more common in people over 60 and rarely affects people under 40. Usually only one kidney is affected, and it’s rare for cancer to affect the other kidney.
Wilms’ tumour (or nephroblastoma) is an uncommon type of kidney cancer that can affect very young children.
Cancer of the kidney isn’t infectious and can’t be passed on to other people.
There are different types of kidney cancer. About 90% of kidney cancers (9 out of 10) are renal cell cancers (RCC), sometimes called renal adenocarcinoma. They start in the cells that line very small tubes, called tubules, in the kidney cortex.
There are different types of renal cell cancer. The most common type is clear cell renal cancer. Less common types are papillary, chromophobe and collecting duct renal cancer.
Another type of cancer that can affect the kidneys starts in the cells that line the renal pelvis, where the kidney joins with the ureter. These cancers, sometimes called transitional cell cancers, behave and are treated differently to renal cell cancer. This section is about renal cell cancer, which we call kidney cancer.
Kidney cancer comprises of three per cent of
all cancers. The most common subtype is renal cell carcinoma. It is more
commonly seen in USA than India. It is a slow growing cancer in majority of
cases, but it behaves aggressively in some patients.
Causes
- The cause of kidney cancer is still unclear.
- However it is associated with certain environmental risk factors like smoking, exposure to cadmium, asbestos etc.
- It is seen to have hereditary/ genetic predisposition.
- It is more common in males, in older people between the ages of 60 and 70, and in individuals with lack of exercise and obesity.
Symptoms
- Clinical symptoms are mostly related to primary tumour i.e. haematuria (blood in urine), flank pain, and mass in abdomen.
- Some patients have weight loss unexplained fever, and features of hypercalcaemia (high calcium level in blood).
- In advanced stage disease patients may complain of pain in the bones, backache due to bone metastasis, cough/ breathing difficulty because of lung spread.
- Rarely, symptoms may include headache, vomiting, paralysislfits, and brain metastasis. Anaemia and fatigue may be symptoms in some cases.
Patients of
kidney cancer need a complete staging work up to plan the line of management.
Quite often it is a multidisciplinary approach which gives best results for an
individual patient. It needs good physical examination along with complete blood
tests like haemogram, blood chemistry, radiological imaging like ultrasound, CT
scan, and MRI scan. Histological diagnosis is to be confirmed
by FNAC/trucut
biopsy.
In the early
stage (localised kidney tumour, not spread to distant organs in the body), it
is managed better with radical surgery, which is curative in majority of patients.
Radiation is
one more modality of treatment that is advised in a very selective group of
patients.
Kidney cancer
(RCC) is considered as one of the radio resistant and chemoresistant cancers
with very poor response. For advanced stage RCC, biologic therapy/immunotherapy
(like Interferon/ Interleukin-2) along with chemotherapy had been used for a
long time with limited benefit.
Treatment
Surgery is the main treatment for kidney cancer that hasn’t spread outside the kidney (stages 1 and 2). If the tumour is small, the surgeon will usually only remove the part of the kidney containing the tumour. But in some cases, depending on the size of the cancer, the whole kidney may need to be removed (nephrectomy). This is sometimes done using keyhole surgery.
In some situations, treatments that destroy the cancer cells using heat (radiofrequency ablation) or extreme cold (cryotherapy) can be used to treat small kidney cancers instead of an operation. There is currently no standard treatment given to reduce the risk of kidney cancer coming back after surgery (called adjuvant treatment).
Advanced Cancer
Even when the cancer has spread outside the kidney, your surgeon may still advise you to have an operation to remove the kidney. This can help to slow down and control the cancer. You’ll usually have treatment with a targeted therapy drug as well.
When kidney cancer has spread outside the kidney and to other parts of the body the main treatment is targeted therapy. Occasionally radiotherapy, chemotherapy orhormonal therapy treatment is used.
Please
scan and email your medical reports to us at care@medworldindia.com and we
shall get you a Free Medical Opinion from India’s Best Doctors.
Call Us : +91-9811058159
Mail Us : care@medworldindia.com
No comments:
Post a Comment