Renal cell carcinoma (renal cancer for short) is one of the common malignancies of the urinary tract. After a diagnosis of kidney cancer is made, the doctor will determine the clinical stage based on imaging results and initially develop a treatment plan based on the stage results.
- For patients with stage I and II disease, because the lesion is confined to the kidney, it can also be called early stage renal cancer, and depending on the size and location of the tumor, early kidney tumor resection can be pursued.
- For stage III patients whose tumors have not yet metastasized distantly but have locally invaded the tissues surrounding the kidney, they may be temporarily inoperable, and further surgical treatment can be pursued after choosing appropriate drugs and other treatments to make the tumor regress.
- For stage III patients who have developed distant metastases, a combination of therapies including surgical treatment, molecular targeted therapy, and immunotherapy can be aggressively pursued.
In a very small number of specific patients, especially older patients with severe systemic disease that cannot tolerate surgery and stage I kidney cancer, the tumor grows very slowly or does not progress at all. In such cases, the physician and patient may jointly choose to follow up closely, keeping an eye on the size and shape of the tumor on CT (computed tomography) scans. Although we do not consider this an aggressive treatment option, it underscores the point that in these particular patients, the tumors are growing relatively slowly and are not life-threatening.
And for relatively young and healthy patients, a proactive treatment plan should be considered first. Because it is extremely unsafe to rely on follow-up alone, tumors can progress at any time, and when they do, the best chance of curing the cancer is lost.