Kidney cancer is a common malignant tumor originating in the kidney. According to the annual report of National Tumor Registry, in 2009, the incidence rate of kidney cancer in China was 4.5/100,000, and the mortality rate was 1.46/100,000. According to the data from Beijing Cancer Registry, the incidence rate of kidney cancer ranks the first among all malignant tumors. Kidney cancer is also regarded as a “rich disease”. “Kidney cancer has two characteristics in its incidence, one is that the incidence rate in urban areas is higher than that in rural areas, and the other is that the incidence rate in men is higher than that in women, and the ratio of male and female patients usually reaches 2:1,” said Dr. Ma, the assistant to the president of the Cancer Hospital of the Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences, Ma Jianhui, chief physician of the Department of Urology, told t Look East Weekly that the incidence rate of kidney cancer in Chinese men has risen from 1/100,000 10 years ago to 10/100,000, and the incidence rate is still increasing at a rate of about 6 percent per year. In Ma’s opinion, high protein, high calorie and high fat dietary habits and high alcohol and smoking lifestyle are the main reasons that have led to the significant increase in the incidence of kidney cancer in recent years, “Although no clear causative factors of kidney cancer have been found, smoking, obesity and high blood pressure are all known risk factors associated with kidney cancer.” “Kidney cancer can also be considered a rich disease. At present, the incidence of kidney cancer is showing a higher trend year by year all over the world, and the incidence rate of kidney cancer in China has exceeded that of western developed countries.” Ma Jianhui said. He Zhisong, chief physician of the Department of Urology at Peking University First Hospital, told t Look East Weekly that China had made a 2,000-person consecutive registration of kidney cancer for 20 large medical institutions across the country in 2009, which found that the median incidence age of kidney cancer among Chinese people was between 50 and 60 years old, a figure that was nearly 10 years earlier than the international level. “At that time, the original plan was for each medical institution to register 100 kidney cancer patients, but during the implementation, it was found that hospitals in the north could basically complete the statistics very quickly, while some very large hospitals in the south, which have a large number of patients with other malignant tumors, had difficulties in completing the registration of even these 100 cases of patients. So from this situation, we may be able to make a speculation that the incidence of kidney cancer in the north is higher than in the south.” He Zhisong said. Early cure rate exceeds 80% The incidence rate of kidney cancer is increasing year by year, but compared with other malignant tumors, early detection of kidney cancer is not difficult, and only a simple ultrasound can serve as a screening test. “Early-stage kidney cancer usually does not show obvious symptoms, so when imaging technologies such as ultrasound and CT are not fully popularized, patients will mostly come to the doctor only after they feel obvious discomfort or develop certain symptoms.” He Zhisong told this reporter that the medical profession calls hematuria, lumbar and abdominal pain and abdominal mass as the “triple sign” of kidney cancer, and once these symptoms appear, kidney cancer has often developed to the middle and late stages. “In recent years, with the continuous improvement of health consciousness and the increasing popularization of routine medical checkups, close to 70% of patients are found to have kidney cancer through ultrasound during medical checkups, and the treatment effect of these people tends to be more optimistic due to earlier discovery.” He Zhisong said, compared with lung cancer, liver cancer and other malignant tumors with higher danger, kidney cancer belongs to the tumor species that can be cured by surgery, and as long as it is found in time, more than 85% of early cases can be completely cured. According to our reporter, the reason why the surgical treatment effect of early stage kidney cancer is relatively good is that there is usually a layer of envelope wrapped around the tumor body of kidney cancer, and it is under this kind of “isolation” that the risk of metastasis of the cancer cells is greatly reduced. “As long as the tumor does not break through this envelope, nearly 90% of the patients will not experience recurrence and metastasis after surgery.” He Zhisong introduced that 2,000-person continuous kidney cancer registry in 2009 showed that 87 percent of kidney cancer patients belonged to Stage 1 or Stage 2 early-stage kidney cancer patients. “I recommend that people over 40 years old should have a physical examination every year.” Ma Jianhui explained that all kidney cancers with a diameter of less than 7 cm belong to early-stage kidney cancer, and current ultrasound imaging can even detect tumors with a diameter of 0.5 cm, “Ultrasound is the most accurate and painless and harmless way to detect kidney cancer.” Surgery is the most accurate and painless way to detect kidney cancer. Surgery for early-stage kidney cancer is very effective, but under the influence of traditional concepts such as “the kidney is the basis of life”, many male patients will ask the doctors to preserve the kidney in the surgery regardless of their own conditions after diagnosis. He Zhisong believes that there are certain prerequisites for kidney-sparing surgery, which must be safe and effective before considering whether it is possible to preserve the kidney. “Generally speaking, we can treat tumors of 4 cm or even less than 7 cm with kidney-preserving treatment; in addition, for those patients who originally have only one kidney, or the other kidney is not functioning well, we will also consider kidney-preserving treatment, but the difficulty and risk of kidney-preserving surgery is much higher than that of radical treatment (i.e., surgery for removal of the kidney). ” For those patients with advanced kidney cancer that has already spread and metastasized at the time of diagnosis and cannot be cured by surgery, the most effective treatment at present is targeted therapy. “The main principle of targeted drugs is to make the tumor not get nutritional supply, it can not ‘kill’ the tumor cells like traditional chemotherapy drugs, but it can turn the tumor into a chronic disease like diabetes and hypertension, even if it can not be completely cured, but it can inhibit the growth of the tumor, so that the patient can live with the tumor. ” However, He Zhisong also said that a targeted drug usually can only inhibit one way of tumor growth, because the tumor itself will look for other pathways, so many patients in the stability of a period of time, the condition will still appear again progress. Without the use of targeted drugs, the median survival period of metastatic kidney cancer patients is about 13 months, while targeted drugs can extend patients’ survival period to more than two years. “The clinical benefit rate of targeted drugs for kidney cancer patients can reach 70%~80%, but the effectiveness and safety of drugs are often contradictory to each other, and there are times when the effect of drug use has not been shown, and patients will refuse to use the drugs because of some adverse reactions, and we feel very helpless in the face of this situation.” He Zhisong said that patients should try to overcome the adverse reactions under the guidance of the doctor, and strive for a longer and better survival.