What is renal cancer with vena cava tumor embolism

  Vena cava tumor embolism accounts for about 5% to 10% of patients with kidney cancer, and 14% to 39% of these emboli extend to the right atrium. As the right renal vein is shorter, vena cava embolism occurs mostly in patients with right renal cancer, but we have also dealt with several cases of left renal cancer embolism. Although there is a vena cava thrombus but no lymphatic or distant metastasis, radical nephrectomy can still be performed to remove the thrombus by incising the vena cava, and if necessary, a section of the inferior vena cava can be removed, which may still be curable.  Depending on the length of the thrombus, it can be classified into four grades, namely, intrarenal vein, grade I (inferior hepatic vena cava), grade II (intrahepatic vena cava) and grade III (supra-diaphragmatic and intra-atrial). However, if the tumor grows above the level of the hepatic vein, the risk and difficulty of surgery increases significantly, so that many doctors choose palliative nephrectomy or even give up surgery to remove the kidney tumor and tumor. If radical nephrectomy and vena cava embolization is performed, the 5-year survival rate can be 32-69%.  When surgical removal of inferior vena cava tumor embolus, the risk of surgery is indeed huge because it is easy to cause the dislodgement of the embolus and the dislodged embolus causes pulmonary embolism, which can lead to the death of the patient in time for resuscitation. Moreover, this kind of surgery requires close cooperation among cardiothoracic surgery, anesthesiology, hepatic surgery, intensive care unit, urology and other multidisciplinary departments to complete the surgery, and only large general hospitals have the conditions to do can have this kind of surgery, so this kind of patients are often rejected by many hospitals and doctors. In the past 5 years, we have adopted the method of deep cryopreservation embolization to significantly reduce the risk of tumor freeing and tumor embolization during the process of embolization. This approach examines the entire inferior vena cava and atrial cavity under a completely bloodless surgical view, facilitating the removal of friable and adherent tumor emboli and avoiding major bleeding, while providing a safe ischemic time of more than 30 minutes, which can ensure the completion of vena cava tumor embolus removal and proper vena cava reconstruction. We have completed nearly 10 cases of this type of surgery (mostly in patients who were rejected by some major hospitals) with very good results, no surgical deaths, and very satisfactory results at follow-up to date. Although several patients with higher postoperative pathological malignancy are now found to have metastases present, their general condition has improved significantly compared to the preoperative period, which also effectively prolongs survival time. Due to the great trauma of this kind of surgery, many patients have doubts. Recently, we have further improved the surgical method, which obviously reduces the trauma of the surgery and shortens the patient’s full recovery time significantly, generally our patients can be discharged from the hospital in about 10 days after surgery.  If you are a patient with renal cancer with vena cava tumor embolism without metastases, especially if you are under 70 years old and in relatively good general condition, please do not give up the opportunity of surgical treatment easily, after all, surgery is still the first choice for this kind of disease. The efficacy of surgery has been confirmed through our practice.