Kidney Cancer Treatments

A nephrectomy is where part or all of the kidney is removed. In a partial nephrectomy, just tumours and nearby kidney tissue is removed. This leaves much of the healthy kidney. This is the preferred treatment in BHD. Your surgeon will decide whether this is an option in your case.

Sometimes, you may need to have your whole kidney removed. This depends on the size, number, and location of your tumours. Removing the whole kidney is called a radical nephrectomy. If your surgeon plans to remove the whole kidney, it is important you tell him that you have BHD and you may get tumours in the other kidney at a later date.

Kidney surgery can be performed as an open surgery, or by keyhole surgery. This is also known as laparoscopy. In keyhole surgery, the surgeon will make a few small incisions in your stomach. They will then use specialist instruments and a small camera to operate through the incisions. Recovery times are often much shorter following keyhole surgery. There is usually less pain, bleeding, and scarring. Some surgeons use robotic equipment to improve the surgery.

Ablation is a technique that can be used to remove smaller tumours. There are several types of ablation.

BHD experts do not usually recommend ablation for BHD kidney tumours.  It is best suited to people with a single, small tumour. As you may have more than one tumour in BHD, you would need a lot of ablation surgery. Ablation can also make it difficult to treat any tumours that may grow in that kidney later.

If not treated, it is possible that the kidney cancer becomes so advanced that it can stop the kidneys from working. If this happens, you may need a kidney transplant or dialysis.

Kidney transplants and dialysis are not very common in BHD.

There is a long kidney transplant waiting list in many parts of the world. Transplants using organs from compatible family members are possible. However, if your family member also has BHD, they would not be a suitable donor. This is because the transplanted kidney may develop tumours. The donor may also develop cancer in their remaining kidney.

 In some rare cases, someone may only find out they have kidney cancer very late in the disease course. This is usually when someone doesn’t know they have BHD and didn’t have regular scans. This might mean that the tumour has spread and surgery alone is not sufficient. In these cases, you may need additional treatment.

These drugs have all been designed to target cancer cells and stop them from being able to grow. There are three main types of targeted therapy. They are called tyrosine kinase inhibitors (TKI), mTOR inhibitors, and monoclonal antibody therapy.

Immunotherapies are drugs that boost the immune system’s ability to target and kill cancer cells. A number of these drugs have been approved to treat advanced kidney cancer. Their availability will depend on where you live. In the UK, some drugs are available on the NHS. Some may also be accessible through the cancer drugs fund,

Chemotherapy is a systemic cancer drug treatment. This means it treats the whole body. It may be used if kidney cancer has spread to other parts of the body.

Radiotherapy uses radiation to kill cancer cells. It is not normally used to treat kidney cancer. This is because kidney cancer is less sensitive to radiotherapy and other treatments are more effective. Radiotherapy may be used to treat kidney cancer that has spread to the brain. It can also be used to relieve some of the symptoms of advanced cancer such as pain.

A number of new treatments for kidney cancer are currently being tested and are only available as part of a clinical trial. The IKCC have a kidney cancer clinical trial search engine.

In addition, combinations of different types of therapies are being tested together. Researchers hope there will be an additive effect if using more than one type of drug.