Kidney Cancer Symptoms and Treatment Options
The kidneys are two bean-shaped organs located behind the abdominal organs that are responsible for removing waste products in the body and regulating blood pressure. Kidney cancer, sometimes referred to as renal cancer, is the abnormal growth of cells in the kidneys. Common symptoms of kidney cancer include blood in the urine, a lump or bulge (tumor) in the lower back, rapid or unexplained weight loss, and pain in the lower back. Upon diagnosis, your doctor will work with you and your healthcare team to provide the best kidney cancer therapy, and may use a combination of the following kidney cancer treatments: 1. Surgery The most common kidney cancer treatment is surgery. The details of this treatment depend on the extent of the damage that kidney cancer has caused to your body. There are several surgical options that doctors can choose depending on the patient’s condition. They include: Partial nephrectomy: The surgeon removes the infected part containing the tumor, and Radical nephrectomy: This is where the surgeon extracts the whole kidney and some of the neighboring tissues, including, potentially, some lymph nodes. 2 . Targeted therapy Targeted therapy is a type of drug treatment that is meant to halt cancer from growing and spreading throughout the body by attacking specific cancer cell features.