Kidney Cancer - Its various Causes along with Sign, Symptoms, Treatments and Prognosis

Several types of cancer can develop in the kidney. The most common form of kidney cancer in adults is the renal cell cancer.

Transitional cell cancer (carcinoma), which affects the renal pelvis, is a less common form of kidney cancer.

It is similar to cancer that occurs in the bladder and is often treated like bladder cancer. Wilms' tumor, the most common type of childhood kidney cancer, is different from kidney cancer in adults.

As kidney cancer grows, it may invade organs near the kidney, such as the liver, colon, or pancreas. Kidney cancer cells may also break away from the original tumor and spread (metastasize) to other parts of the body. When kidney cancer spreads, cancer cells may appear in the lymph nodes. For this reason, lymph nodes near the kidney may be removed during surgery. The disease has spread to other parts of the body if cancer cells are in the lymph nodes.

Kidney cancer may spread and form new tumors, most often in the bones or lungs. The new tumors have the same kind of abnormal cells and the same name as the original (primary) tumor in the kidney.

For example, if kidney cancer spreads to the lungs, the cancer cells in the lungs are kidney cancer cells. In this case the disease is metastatic kidney cancer; it is not lung cancer.

Causes of Kidney Cancer

With age the risk to develop kidney cancer also increases. Studies show that kidney cancer occurs most often between the ages of 50 and 70. It affects almost twice as many men as women. The other causes which may lead to kidney cancer include:

Tobacco use and Smoking.
Over weight or Obesity, reports suggest that being overweight may be a risk factor for women and less common in men
Occupational exposure, coke oven workers in steel plants have above-average rates of kidney cancer also that asbestos in the workplace, which has been linked to cancers of the lung and mesothelium (a membrane that surrounds internal organs of the body), also increases the risk of some kidney cancers.
Radiation, Phenacetin drug.
Von Hippel-Lindau (VHL) disease: Researchers have found that people who have this inherited disorder are at greater risk of developing renal cell carcinoma, as well as tumors in other organs. Researchers have found the gene responsible for VHL, and they believe that the isolation of this gene may lead to improved methods of diagnosis, treatment, and even prevention of some kidney cancers.

Kidney Cancer Symptoms or Sign of Kidney Cancer

Kidney cancer symptoms or sign of kidney cancer is not evident in the early stages of the disease. In the later stages, the most common sign of both renal cell and transitional cell cancers is blood in the urine (hematuria). Blood may be present one day and not the next. Blood in urine may sometimes be visible to naked eye or only seen under the microscope in urinalysis. Apart from hematuria they are other possible signs and symptoms which include:

A pain in the back just below the ribs that doesn't go away
A lump or a mass in the area of the kidneys that's discovered during an examination
Weight loss
Fatigue
Loss of appetite;
Recurrent fevers or Intermittent fever
Pain in other parts of the body if the cancer has metastasized which stays for long
Wilms' tumor usually has no symptoms, and doctors are likely to discover
A general feeling of poor health.
High blood pressure or a lower than normal number of red cells in the blood (anemia) may also signal a kidney tumor (less common).

These symptoms may be caused by cancer or by other, less serious problems such as an infection or a cyst. So certainly a doctor’s diagnosis is required. Usually, early cancer does not cause pain; it is important not to wait to feel pain before seeing a doctor.
In most cases, the earlier cancer is diagnosed and treated, the better a person's chance for a full recovery.

Kidney Cancer Treatment

Kidney cancer treatment often is done People by a team of specialists, which may include a urologist, an oncologist, and a radiation oncologist

Some people take part in clinical trial (research study) using new treatment methods. Depending on the stage of the disease, the patient's general health and age, and other factors the type of treatment method is followed.

Kidney cancer is usually treated with surgery, radiation therapy, immunotherapy, chemotherapy, or hormone therapy. Sometimes a special treatment called arterial embolization is used. The doctors may decide to use one treatment method or a combination of methods.

Surgery

Until recently, the standard treatment for cancer that was confined to the kidney was surgical removal of the entire kidney (radical or simple nephrectomy). In a radical nephrectomy, surgeons remove the kidney along with the adrenal gland that sits atop the kidney, a border of normal tissue and adjacent lymph nodes.

A simple nephrectomy involves removing the entire kidney, although not the adrenal gland or lymph nodes. But studies show that removing just the tumor (nephron-sparing surgery), rather than the whole kidney, results in survival rates similar to those of more radical procedures.

In addition, people who have nephron-sparing surgery appear less likely to develop chronic kidney failure and are more likely to enjoy a better quality of life than do those who have the whole kidney removed.

Sometimes surgeons may choose to remove the entire kidney because of the extent and the location of the tumor.

Radiation therapy

Radiation therapy for kidney cancer involves external radiation, which comes from radioactive material outside the body. A machine aims the rays at a specific area of the body. Most often, treatment is given on an outpatient basis in a hospital or clinic 5 days a week for several weeks. This schedule helps protect normal tissue by spreading out the total dose of radiation. The patient does not need to stay in the hospital for radiation therapy, and patients are not radioactive during or after treatment.

Immunotherapy or Biological therapy

This treatment uses the body's immune system to fight cancer. An oncologist may administer a substance known as a biological response modifier, such as interferon or interleukin-2. Normally produced by the body, these substances are also made in laboratories. Biological response modifiers can have serious side effects, including chills, fever, nausea, vomiting and loss of appetite.

Chemotherapy

Chemotherapy is the use of drugs to kill cancer cells. Although useful in the treatment of many other cancers, chemotherapy has shown only limited effectiveness against kidney cancer. However, researchers continue to study new drugs and new drug combinations that may prove to be more useful.

Hormone therapy

Hormone therapy is used in a small number of patients with advanced kidney cancer. Some kidney cancers may be treated with hormones to try to control the growth of cancer cells. More often, it is used as palliative therapy.

Kidney Cancer Prognosis and Kidney Cancer Survival Rate

Prognosis and survival by stage

As with many other types of cancer, the outcome of kidney cancer or the kidney cancer prognosis and kidney cancer survival rate depends on how advanced it is when it is diagnosed. In other words this is the stage of the cancer.

Of all those diagnosed with kidney cancer, about 55 out of every 100 people diagnosed (55%) live for at least five years after they are diagnosed.

For Stage 1 kidney cancer generally the prognosis is very good. With a less aggressive cancer about 94 out of every 100 people diagnosed (94%) live for at least 5 years after diagnosis. Even with a more aggressive type of tumor the 5 year survival figure is likely to be over 70%.

For Stage 2 kidney cancer patients live for at least 5 years after diagnosis, with treatment for their cancer and for Stage 3 generally between 40 and 70 out of every 100 people diagnosed will live for at least 5 years after diagnosis.

For Stage 4 kidney cancer about 10 out of every 100 people diagnosed live for at least 5 years. About 1 in 4 people (25%) with kidney cancer have stage 4 when they are diagnosed.