What is it and who is affected? (Kidney Cancer)

What is it and who is affected?

Kidney cancer ranks third in frequency of urological tumors and accounts for 3 percent of all tumors in the body.

Maximum frequency appears between the fifth and seventh decades of life, but can occur at any age. About sex, it is more common in men than in women by a ratio of 2/1.

Renal cell carcinoma is the type most common kidney cancer, accounting for over 90% of malignant tumors of the kidney. Approximately 80% of people with renal cell carcinoma have a clear cell carcinoma.

Less common types of cancerous tumors include transitional cell carcinomas, Wilms tumors, and renal sarcomas.

The transitional cell carcinomas, are also known as urothelial carcinomas. They originate in the renal pelvis (the junction of the ureter and kidney) and behave very similar to bladder cancer.

What are its causes?

The causes of kidney cancer are still unknown, although it has been linked to certain genetic diseases and snuff consumption.

Cigarette smoking increases by approximately 40% the risk of renal cell carcinoma.

People with von Hippel-Lindau often suffer from various types of tumors. Between 25% and 45% of these patients develop renal cell carcinoma generally clear cell type.

What are your symptoms?

The clinical presentation of kidney cancer is very variable. Currently, 40-50 percent of kidney tumors are diagnosed by ultrasonography during a routine medical check, when the tumor has not yet caused any symptoms.

In other cases, diagnosed from clinical symptoms can cause the tumor as pain at the lower back, palpable abdominal mass or have blood in the urine.

In approximately 50% of cases, while detecting the cancer has not spread beyond the kidney. In 25% of people, when the cancer is detected locally grown outside the kidney, and the remaining 25% will have metastasized to other parts of the body such as the lungs or bones.

In the early stages of the disease may not have any symptoms. These may appear as the tumor grows.

The most common symptoms are:

Blood in the urine.
Mass in the abdomen.
Pain in the side that does not go away.
Loss of appetite.
Weight loss for no known reason.
Anemia.

What is the treatment?

Surgery is the standard treatment for tumors in which it is possible to cure the disease in over 50% of cases.

In advanced stages, surgery may help alleviate the symptoms caused by the tumor and in some patients with metastasis few, you can get a better survival if performed excision of the tumor and metastases.

At present, the preferred treatment of kidney cancer nephrectomy is enlarged. In this operation removes the entire kidney along with the fat that surrounds and nodes adjacent to the area of ​​the vessels supplying the kidney. In tumors affecting the upper pole includes the removal of the adrenal gland.

Due to improved early diagnosis techniques that reveal smaller tumors, treatment may be modified performing a partial nephrectomy. This technique removes only the portion of the kidney in which the tumor, preserving the remaining healthy kidney. Partial nephrectomy is performed when tumors whose size does not exceed 4-5 cm in diameter and are located in areas of the kidney where they are not affected or may be involvement of the blood vessels that nourish the kidney.

Approximately 25% of patients with kidney cancer and metastases at time of diagnosis.

If the tumor is located but you can not operate, you can try to alleviate the symptoms they cause by radiation therapy or by selective blockage of blood vessels that sustain (arterial embolization).

Radiation therapy can help alleviate symptoms caused by the tumor pirmario (pain, bleeding) or metastases (eg, bone pain or nerve involvement).

Conventional chemotherapy has not been very successful in the treatment of metastatic renal cell carcinoma.

Immunotherapy is a treatment that stimulates the immune system to fight the tumor, using special substances: interferon or interleukin. These treatments may be able to lessen the symptoms and make a profit, modest, survival, especially if the kidney is removed before treatment.

The anti-angiogenic drugs have shown promising efficacy in kidney tumors with metastasis. Sorafenib has been the first drug of this family recently marketed for the treatment of kidney cancer. Other drugs such as sunitinib (Sutent ®) and bevacizumab, have also been shown to be active.

The transitional cell carcinomas, usually treated with surgery to remove the kidney and ureter and the bladder where the ureter joins. Often used chemotherapy and radiation, and surgery.