Chemotherapy
Chemotherapy uses anticancer drugs that are given into a vein or by mouth.
These drugs enter the bloodstream and reach all areas of the body, making
this treatment potentially useful for cancer that has spread or metastasized to
organs beyond the kidney.
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Clinical Trials
Studies of promising new or experimental treatments are known as clinical
trials. A clinical trial is only done when there is some reason to believe that the
treatment being studied may be of value to the patient.
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Future therapies
Scientists are looking for causes of RCC and ways to prevent RCC. Doctors
are working to improve treatments as part of a major effort to lower the
number of RCC cases and deaths from this cancer.
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Immunotherapy
Although curative treatments for RCC involve removing the local (primary)
tumor, cancer that has spread beyond the kidney requires treatment of all
areas of the body (systemic therapy). Consequently, a lot of attention is now
focused on a relatively new approach to treatment of RCC called
immunotherapy.
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Nephrectomy prior to immunotherapy
Most treatments involving immunotherapy have required removing the
cancerous kidney prior to treatment.
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Radiation Therapy
Radiation therapy uses high-energy radiation to kill cancer cells. Radiation
therapy is occasionally used to treat kidney cancer. Radiation therapy is
sometimes used as the treatment for kidney cancer for people whose general
health is too poor to undergo surgery.
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Surgical Treatments
Surgery is the main treatment for renal cell carcinoma (RCC). The chances of surviving a large RCC
without having surgery are poor. Depending on the type and stage, surgery
may be used to remove the RCC together with some of the surrounding
kidney tissue or the entire kidney.
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Treatment choices by stage
Stage I or stage II: Patients with stage I and II RCC most often have their
cancers surgically removed by either radical or partial nephrectomy.
Additional (adjuvant) chemotherapy, radiation therapy, or immunotherapy
after surgery for stage I or stage II RCC is not recommended.
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