Kidney Cancer

Kidneys are vital organs that clean your blood and produce urine, so kidney cancer is a serious concern. At Cypress Urology in Cypress, Texas, board-certified urologist Kumaran Sathyamoorthy, MD, MPH, and physician assistant Maelyn Dishman, PA-C, offer expert diagnosis and treatment for patients with kidney cancer. With their help, you could benefit from a better quality of life and more time, even if your cancer is advanced. To benefit from their compassionate care, call Cypress Urology today or go online to schedule an appointment.

What is kidney cancer?

Kidney cancer develops when cells in the kidney undergo a genetic mutation and multiply out of control. The cancerous cells don’t have a limited lifespan like healthy cells, so they don’t die. The combination of accelerated cell growth and unlimited lifespan creates tumors in the kidney.

Kidney cancer most often develops in the renal tube lining. Renal tubes are small structures inside the kidneys that clean your blood and help make urine. 

Without expert diagnosis and management, kidney cancer can spread, or metastasize, to your bones, brain, lungs, and other areas, making it much harder to treat.

What causes kidney cancer?

There’s no single cause of kidney cancer, but there are risk factors that increase your chances of developing the disease. These include:

• Older age
• Smoking
• Excess body weight
• High blood pressure (hypertension)
• Inherited syndromes like von Hippel-Lindau disease
• Family history of kidney cancer

There’s also a link between having kidney disease and developing cancer. Long-term dialysis treatment for chronic kidney failure increases your risk of kidney cancer.

Diagnosing kidney cancer involves undergoing blood and urine tests and diagnostic imaging procedures like a CT scan or MRI. If a biopsy is necessary, your Cypress Urology provider collects a tiny piece of the kidney for lab analysis.

How is kidney cancer treated?

Diagnostic testing helps determine how advanced the cancer is, which is essential to your treatment program.

One option is surgery to remove all or part of the affected kidney. An alternative for smaller tumors is destroying the cancer cells by heating or freezing them.

Cryoablation involves inserting a needle into the tumor using image guidance such as ultrasound. Your provider delivers cold gas via the needle to freeze the cancer cells. A similar procedure, radiofrequency ablation, uses an electrical current to overheat the cancerous cells.

Treatments for advanced or recurring kidney cancer include:

Targeted therapy
This treatment uses drugs that target specific abnormalities in the cancer cells, causing them to die.

Immunotherapy
Immunotherapy boosts your immune system, so your body is better able to fight cancer. One reason cancer can develop is that the mutated cells produce proteins that allow them to hide from your immune system. Immunotherapy overcomes this problem.

Radiation therapy
Radiation therapy involves directing high-powered energy beams like X-rays into the cancer cells. It can help treat cancer that’s spread beyond the kidneys.

To schedule a screening for kidney cancer or discuss any symptoms you develop, call Cypress Urology today or book an appointment online.