Are you experiencing blood in your urine, aka hematuria, and/or chronic side pain symptoms? Then you should get with your health care provider to check your kidneys for cancer.
The most common symptoms of kidney cancer are hematuria and chronic side, aka flank pain. On the up side, you have two kidneys and its cancer generally only affects one.
The primary task of your kidneys is to filter out excess water, salt and waste products from your blood, which are excreted as urine. And if one of your kidneys is lost to cancer, you remain healthy because the other one can meet all your necessary filtration needs.
Renal cell carcinoma, aka renal cell cancer or renal cell adenocarcinoma, is the most common type of kidney cancer in adults. Whereas, children typically develop Wilms’ tumor.
On the downside, kidney cancer infrequently causes any symptoms during its early development. As it grows, your hematuria and side pain may be accompanied by other signs or symptoms, like:
- fever
- fatigue
- weight loss
- night sweats
- appetite loss
- hypertension
- hypercalcemia
- lump in area of affected kidney
- chronic pain in back just below ribs
Although the actual cause of kidney cancer is unknown, men are significantly more prevalent for this type of cancer. Some other factors believed to have some association or increase your risk for cancer of kidney include:
- obesity
- smoking
- family history
- tuberous sclerosis
- high blood pressure
- chronic kidney failure
- polycystic kidney disease
- von Hippel Lindau disease
- diuretic use ~ controversial
- long term dialysis treatment
- analgesics containing phenacetin ~ not avail. in U.S.
- recurrent exposure to asbestos, cadmium, petroleum products, lead, dry-cleaning solvents, trichloroethylene
Some form of surgery is usually the initial cancer of kidney treatment. The surgical procedures employed to treat kidney cancer involve:
- partial nephrectomy ~ removes the tumor and a bit of healthy tissue around it
- nephrectomy ~ removal of your affected kidney and potentially adjacent lymph nodes, adrenal gland
If surgical removal of the cancer in your kidney is too risky, then these other options for treating your kidney cancer might be used:
- cryoablation ~ freezes cancer cells
- radiofrequency ablation ~ heats up or burns cancer cells
- emoblization ~ block blood flow to your tumor to deprive it of oxygen & nutrients
Immunotherapy, targeted therapy and chemotherapy treatment may be utilized as well.
