Kidney cancer starts in the kidneys and then spreads to the rest of the body. It starts when the healthy cells in the kidney start to multiply at an abnormal rate due to a mutation and slowly crowd out the healthy cells. These abnormal cells do not form healthy tissue and lead to the malfunctioning of the organ, eventually resulting in the body not working.
The most common type of kidney cancer is renal cell carcinoma where the renal tubules that clean the blood and make urine become cancerous.
Once diagnosed, cancer needs to be removed or it can interfere with the functioning of the organ or spread to the surrounding tissues and organs. When it is detected in the early stages, treatments for renal or kidney cancer have higher chances of working as the condition is mostly curable. There are several advanced therapies and procedures which have shown an increase in survival rates if the treatment was begun in the initial stages of the disease. Here are some of the common treatments for renal or kidney cancer.
1. Surgery
The following procedures are used to remove the kidney or a part of the kidney or the surrounding tissues:
- Radical nephrectomy
- Simple nephrectomy
- Partial nephrectomy
If surgery cannot remove cancer, one’s doctor may suggest alternative treatments to destroy the tumor. These include cryotherapy, radiofrequency ablation, and arterial embolization. Treatments depend on a variety of factors and it is essential for one to consult their specialist and find out about the success rates and side-effects of all the methods.
However, the most popular and sought after treatments for renal or kidney cancer are targeted therapy and immunotherapy.
2. Targeted therapy
As a part of this therapy, various medications are used to target the cancer cells with a small amount of toxicity to normal cells.
- Anti-angiogenic agents
These are agents that keep the blood vessels from further nourishing the tumor, which causes it to shrink or stop growing.
- Multikinase inhibitors or tyrosine kinase inhibitors
These are oral medicines that block the pathway of the enzyme that is allowing cancer to grow.
- mTOR inhibitors
This can be administered either orally or through IV. These block the pathways of the blood vessels that help the tumor cells to grow.
Each of these plays a vital role in managing kidney cancer in the advanced stages.
3. Immunotherapy
This is another one of the recommended treatments for renal or kidney cancer where medicines are used to boost the person’s immune system to find and destroy the cells that are cancerous. Different types of immunotherapy are administered based on the type and symptoms of renal cancer.
4. Combining targeted therapy and immunotherapy
There have been new trials that combine the two treatments for renal or kidney cancer. Since they have individually been very effective in treating cancer, both can be combined with a VEGFR inhibitor and an immune checkpoint inhibitor.
It was found that when combined, it helped patients live longer without the disease progressing. Numerous combinations have been explored to find the most ideal and potent form of treatment. The combination has shown promising results and is an overall success when it comes to improving the survival rates of cancer patients. This is a form of treatment that is given only when recommended by a specialist.