After being diagnosed with kidney cancer, many patients are very nervous and desperately want to use multiple treatments on themselves to ensure that kidney cancer will not recur or metastasize after treatment. So, is this thinking reasonable or not?
Currently, there are several treatments for kidney cancer as follows:
- Surgery: including radical nephrectomy, partial nephrectomy, palliative nephrectomy, either laparoscopic surgery or open surgery depending on the stage; and resection of metastases (lung, brain, bone and soft tissue, etc.).
- Immunotherapy (mainly interleukin-2, interferon-alpha, immune checkpoint inhibitors, etc.).
- Molecular targeted therapies.
- Radiotherapy, cryoablation and radiofrequency ablation therapy, etc.
Among them, surgery is the fundamental approach for the treatment of kidney cancer. Especially for those patients with limited lesions, surgery can lead to a cure and long-term survival for most of them.
The prognosis for patients with early-stage kidney cancer is good, and the vast majority of patients with early-stage kidney cancer do not experience recurrence or metastasis after surgery, thus meeting the “cure” criteria.
Studies have shown that adjuvant immunotherapy or targeted therapy after standard surgery for early-stage kidney cancer does not reduce the risk of recurrence or metastasis. On the contrary, the addition of immunotherapy or targeted therapy after surgery in patients with early-stage kidney cancer can cause a variety of adverse effects (drug side effects), such as fever, muscle aches, malaise, gastrointestinal symptoms (nausea, vomiting, etc.), and infections. Although these side effects can be effectively managed, patients do have a reduced quality of life and increased treatment costs.
Therefore, patients with early-stage kidney cancer do not benefit from the addition of adjuvant drug therapy after surgery, but rather add to the financial burden and reduce the quality of life. In general, postoperative adjuvant drug therapy is not recommended for patients with early-stage kidney cancer.