Kidney Cancer Cure Rate

The American Cancer Society estimates that there will be 57,760 new cases of kidney cancer in the U.S. in 2009. In adults the most common type of kidney cancer is called renal cell carcinoma. In children it is Wilms' tumor. The cure rate depends on the stage of the cancer when diagnosed.

Symptoms and Diagnosis

• Many kidney cancers are not detected during the early stages because there are few symptoms. As the cancer grows it may produce symptoms such as blood in the urine, low back pain on one side, a lump in the lower back, fatigue, weight loss, swelling of the legs or ankles, and an unexplained fever. A diagnosis begins with imaging tests (CAT scan, MRI, ultrasound, X-rays, bone scans), lab tests, and then a biopsy taken through a technique called a fine needle aspiration. During the biopsy, a pathologist will look at the cells under a microscope to determine the grade and stage. The grade is based on the appearance of the cells and indicates whether their growth is fast or slow. Staging determines its size and whether it has spread.

Staging

• The American Joint Committee on Cancer developed a staging system known as the TNM system. It describes the size of the tumor ("T"), the extent of the spread to lymph nodes ("N"), and whether is has spread to other organs, or metastasized ("M"). After the TNM category has been determined, the information is used to assign an overall stage of 1, 2, 3, or 4. The difference in severity ranges from stage 1, where the tumor is small and limited to the kidney, to stage 4, where the tumor can be any size and has spread to local or distant lymph nodes and/or organs.

Survival Rates

• The cure rate is expressed as a survival rate because recurrence is always a possibility if any cancer cells have spread. The American Cancer Society provides five-year survival rates based on stages. The five-year survival rate for stage 1 is 96 percent, stage 2 is 82 percent, stage 3 is 64 percent, and stage 4 is 23 percent. These numbers represent the percentage of people who live at least five years after being diagnosed.

  The University of California uses a more complex system for staging kidney cancer that also considers the person's overall health. Their system divides people into low-, intermediate-, and high-risk groups. They have found five-year survival rates for those with cancer that has not spread to other organs to be 97 percent for the low-risk group, 81 percent for intermediate, and 62 percent for high-risk patients.

Survival Factors

• Even though the stage is the best indicator of survival, certain aspects shorten survival times. Two of the factors are a high level of calcium in the blood and anemia. If the cancer has spread to two or more places in the body, and if more aggressive chemotherapy is needed less than a year from the diagnosis, the chance for survival goes down. Physicians also consider the person's general ability to continue performing normal daily activities as a potential indicator of survival.

Trends

• An unfortunate trend in cure rates was published in the September 2006 Journal of the National Cancer Institute. Researchers studied data from 34,503 patients with kidney cancer and discovered that from 1983 to 2002, the mortality rates in the United States rose from 1.2 to 3.2 deaths per 100,000 people. The lead researcher, Dr. John Hollingsworth at the University of Michigan Medical School, said this was due to an increase in larger, more lethal tumors.