Renal Cell Cancer ( Renal Cell Carcinoma ) is a type of cancer that occurs in the renal tubules that perform the important function of filtering the blood and producing urine. It is a type of kidney cancer that generally occur in adults. This disease happens between the age of 50 – 70. The risk of kidney cancer maximizes in some of the conditions like- if there is any family history of the disease, high blood pressure, horseshoe kidney, polycystic kidney, smoking, von Hipple-Lindau disease.
Symptoms of renal cell cancer
a) People will constantly suffer from abdominal pain, a pain that occurs anywhere between your chest and groin.
b) Swelling in body parts.
c) Pain in your back remain constantly
d) You will find blood in the process of urination.
e) Swelling of the veins around a testicle
f) Pain in one side of the body between the upper abdomen and back, this pain is called flank pain.
g) Involuntary weight loss
h) Hard stools or difficulty in passing stools.
i) Excessive growth of hairs in females
j) Pale skin
k) There occurs problem in vision, which means you will suffer from different types of eye problems and vision disturbances.
Different tests that are to be performed
The physician will perform tests to diagnose renal cell cancer. This is done to reveal if there is a swelling in abdomen and about a Varicocele in the male scrotum. Varicocele is a widening of veins along the cord that holds the man’s testicles. The tests that are included in this are abdominal CT scan, blood chemistry, complete blood count, intravenous pyelogram, liver function tests, renal arteriography, and ultrasound of abdomen and kidney as well as urine test. There are some tests required to see if the cancer is spread.
I. Abdominal Examination and Tests
II. Abdominal MRI
III. Bone scan
IV. Chest X-ray
V. PET scan
Renal Cell Cancer Treatment
The first thing that is recommended is a surgery to remove off all or the part of kidney to prevent the body from further infection that may cause due to it and this includes removing bladder, tissues that are surrounded, lymph nodes. In some cases, hormones treatment also reduces the growth of tumor. For treating renal cell carcinoma, chemotherapy is not very much useful; interlukin-2(IL-2) is a drug that may be helpful for some of the patients. This drug is used because it indicates body’s immune system to kill the cancer cells and cure the carcinoma . This drug is very toxic in nature.
Many other chemotherapy drugs are not good to be used when the disease spread outside the kidney. As the development are taking place there are many new medicines came in the market to prevent renal cell cancer like sorafenib (Nexavar), Sunitinib (Sutent), Temsirolimus (Torisal) and Bevacizuma (Avastin). There is another option that is radiation therapy but it is not very effective and used less to treat renal cell cancer.