Renal cell carcinoma is the most common type of cancer, accounting for 90 to 95% of kidney cancer cases and renal cell carcinoma treatment is available and effective especially if the tumor is detected in early stages. Unfortunately, most of the time the disease evolves without causing any symptoms so the patient is diagnosed in advanced stages.
Renal cell carcinoma is diagnosed based on the patient’s symptoms and a physical exam. Early cancer is asymptomatic in most cases but as the condition evolves the patient may experience some of the following symptoms: hematuria (blood in the urine), fatigue, fever with no known cause, edema (swelling in the ankles and legs), unexplained weight loss, low back pain on one side that is not caused by injury or a mass or lump on the lower back or the side. Although these signs are not specific for kidney cancer as they are common symptoms of many non-cancerous diseases, any patient who experiences the patient is advised to seek a doctor’s opinion.
A physical exam may reveal suspicious masses or lumps in the abdomen. The physician will also take an accurate and complete medical history of the patient to find out if there is a family history of kidney cancer or other risk factors.
If renal cell carcinoma is suspected, it is very likely that the doctor will order some laboratory tests that can check the functions of the kidneys and imaging tests that can reveal any structural abnormality in the kidney. Apart from these two tests, biopsies are the tests that are usually used in diagnosis renal cell carcinoma or other types of kidney cancer. A biopsy consists in the removal of a tissues sample from the kidney and then looked at under the microscope. The cancerous cells will look different than the normal cells and therefore, cancer can be accurately diagnosed. The imaging tests are more useful in providing information on how large the tumor is and its location. The imaging tests ordered in kidney cancer cases is CT scans, MRI scans, ultrasounds, PET scans, angiographies and intravenous pyelogram tests.
It is important to mention that the biopsy is the main diagnosing test in cases of kidney cancer. When a biopsy is performed, the cells that are looked at under the microscope give valuable information on the type of cancer, stage, grade and many others. Depending on the way cancer cells look, doctors can evaluate the patient’s state, the treatment type that is going to be followed and the prognosis. There is a close connection between the renal carcinoma and differentiated carcinomas by the means that the better differentiated cancer cells are, the better the prognosis. Well differentiated cells carry the best prognosis, as in a cancer of grade 1 while the poorly differentiated cells carry the worse prognosis as they are present in the late stages of the disease and are seldom curable.
In the end, the grade of the cancer plays an important role in establishing a renal cell carcinoma treatment plan.