How Kidney Cancer Is Diagnosed and Treated

Most people diagnosed with kidney cancer are between 55 and 74, and twice as many men get kidney cancer as women. It is estimated that almost 82,000 new kidney cancer cases will be diagnosed in 2024 and over 14,000 people will die from the disease. It is more common among African Americans, American Indians, and Alaskan native people. Let’s take a look at how kidney cancer is diagnosed and treated.

How Kidney Cancer Develops

When cells that form the kidney mutate, they can grow and divide abnormally and form a tumor. If a tumor has become malignant or cancerous, it can affect nearby organs and tissue and spread throughout the body.

What Are the Signs of Kidney Cancer?

Many people with kidney cancer do not have symptoms, especially people with smaller tumors that are confined to the kidney. Often, these tumors are incidentally found on radiology studies (CT scans, MRI’s, etc) performed for other reasons. If people do have symptoms, some of the more common symptoms include:

Orange ribbon in the hands of a doctor and kidney cancer.

Blood in the urine
A lump in the area of the kidney
Flank pain
Loss of appetite
High blood pressure
Anemia
High calcium
Weight loss
Low grade fever
Fatigue

If you have any of the signs of kidney cancer, of course, they can be from other causes, so it’s important to seek proper diagnosis.

Knowing Your Risk Factors

There are some risk factors that are associated with the development of kidney cancer .

They include the following:

Obesity, and the more obese, the higher the risk
Smoking is a serious risk factor
High blood pressure
Family history of kidney cancer
Long-term dialysis treatment
Gene mutations
Tuberous sclerosis, which is a disease that causes seizure and intellectual disabilities

Some of these risk factors you may know, but others might be unknown to you, and many patients with kidney cancers do not have any of these risk factors.

How Kidney Cancer Is Diagnosed

If you are concerned you may have kidney cancer, schedule an appointment with our board-certified urologists as soon as possible.

After a physical examination and questions about risk factors, you will have blood and urine tests to look for blood in the urine and other clues about your symptoms.

Imaging Tests for Kidney Cancer Diagnosis

Imaging tests provide South Texas Urology Group with a detailed view of the kidneys, allowing them to detect any abnormalities or tumors. These diagnostic tools are crucial for accurately identifying and assessing potential issues within the kidneys. Common imaging tests include:

MRI: Provides high-resolution images to help visualize soft tissues and identify tumors.
CT scan: Offers a comprehensive view of the kidneys, revealing any irregularities or masses that may require further evaluation.

Common Treatments for Kidney Cancer

The recommended treatments depend on your overall health, your age, and the stage of the cancer.

Surgery

Often, surgery is recommended as the initial treatment. The goal of surgical intervention is to remove the cancer, but keep the kidney functioning. The surgeon may remove part of the kidney where the tumor is located, an operation called partial nephrectomy. There are situations where a radical nephrectomy is performed; in this operation, the entire kidney is removed. Surgery can be performed laparoscopically, oftentimes using the Da Vinci robot. There are times when an open (non-laparoscopic surgery) must be performed.

Non-Surgical Treatments

Ablation is one type of non-surgical treatment where either a current is run into the tumor causing the cells or tumor to heat up or burn (radiofrequency ablation) or cold gas is used to freeze cancer cells (cryoablation).

Other treatments include:

Radiation
Immunotherapy
Targeted drug therapy

In some patients with very small tumors, closely monitoring the tumor with subsequent imaging tests may be a good option as not all tumors are cancerous. This is called active surveillance.

As with most cancers, kidney cancer is most treatable when diagnosed early.