Kidney Cancer Symptoms, Causes, Diagnosis and Treatment

What Is Kidney Cancer?

Tiny tubes are present inside the kidneys that are responsible to filter the blood and produce urine after separating the waste. Kidney caner initiates from the lining of these tubes and disturbs the normal process. Symptoms are unlikely to evolve during early stages of kidney cancer. Renal cell carcinoma is the most common type of kidney cancer reported in most cases. However, Wilm’s tumor is another common type that young children usually suffer from. Imaging tests such as the CT scan accidentally discover the kidney cancer very often.

What Are The Symptoms Of Kidney Cancer?

Although symptoms do not evolve at an early stage, the following signs may show up at later stages:

Weariness.
Blood in urine, usually of red, pink or cola color.
Fever occurring at irregular intervals.
Weight loss.
Persistent back pain below the ribs.

Since symptoms evolve at later stages, it is necessary to see a doctor as soon as the symptoms arise.

What Causes Kidney Cancer?

Although the real root cause of kidney cancer is unknown, experts believe that mutations in the DNA of kidney cells. The mutations result in cells growing and dividing abnormally and rapidly forming a tumor. The tumor may, at times, go beyond the kidney and affect other body parts.

What Are The Risk Factors Of Kidney Cancer?

The risk of kidney cancer increases due to the following factors:

Von Hippel-Lindau disease.
Obesity.
Smoking.
Old age.
Hereditary papillary renal cell carcinoma.
Hypertension.
Long-term dialysis for the treatment of kidney failure.

How Is Kidney Cancer Diagnosed?

In order to diagnose kidney cancer, the following tests are generally used:

Imaging tests including magnetic resonance imaging, computerized tomography scan and ultrasound.
Blood test.
Urine test.
Kidney tissue biopsy i.e. removal of a sample kidney tissue for observation.
Through one or a combination of these tests, doctors successfully diagnose kidney caner. However, the next step is determining the stage of kidney cancer. As doctors are not sure since when the kidney cancer is surviving, they need to know the stage so that treatment could be done accordingly. Stage one is the lowest with minor affects within the kidney while stage four is the most severe case in which tumor may extend to bones, lungs or liver.

How Is Kidney Cancer Treated?

The type and stage of kidney cancer are two major factors considered before making a treatment plan. The first preference for the treatment is generally a surgery and may include the following procedures:

Nephron-sparing surgery in which only the tumor is removed instead of the entire kidney.
Nephrectomy in which the entire kidney is removed.

Although surgeries are very useful, they may often lead to bleeding and infections. In some cases, both of the surgery procedures fail to cure kidney cancer and then the following treatments may be used:

Radiofrequency ablation in which a process is used that eventually heats up and burns the cancer cells.
Cryoablation is just the opposite of radiofrequency ablation since the cancer cells are frozen in this process through a gas.