Exploring Your Treatment Options For Renal Cell Carcinoma

If you or someone you love has been diagnosed with renal cell carcinoma (RCC), learning more about how to combat it is a good idea for beating it. Today, modern medicine has made huge strides in advanced cancer treatments, including those that target renal cell carcinoma, cancer that grows in the tubules inside the kidneys. Find out more about the treatment options available for RCC.  

High-Intensity Focused Ultrasound Is Non-Invasive

Focused ultrasound treatments involve a beam of acoustic energy being put through the skin and directly onto the tumor in your kidney. This procedure is painless and has shown promising results for destroying kidney cancer without harming nearby healthy tissue. Focused ultrasound beams work by heating up the tumor. If your kidney tumor does respond, but some it still lingers after focused ultrasound treatment, you can have it done again to destroy the remaining part of the tumor.

Cryotherapy Freezes Cancer

Patients with renal cell carcinoma undergoing cryotherapy are essentially having the cancer cells in their bodies frozen to death. During cryotherapy, liquid nitrogen is injected into cancerous tumors, causing the cells to freeze. The same liquid nitrogen is also used to freeze moles and cancers off of the skin. Once the cancer cells are frozen, they are taken out of your system through the natural processes of waste disposal by your body.

Immunotherapy Using Cytokines

Immunotherapy for RCC involves using proteins called cytokines to stimulate the natural defense responses of the body's immune system for fighting and destroying cancer cells. The cytokines used for this cancer treatment are man-made and have been successful in few patients. Further research is needed to increase the numbers of patients able to respond to this type of treatment. Immunotherapy shows promise in reducing cancer cells but does so only using high doses that produce extreme side effects. Researchers are working to find ways to determine which patients would benefit most from this strong treatment. Bear in mind immunotherapy using cytokines is only done in a monitored hospital setting because of the severity of side effects.

Borrowing A Healthy Person's Immune System

When RCC reaches an advanced stage, the sufferer's own immune system is no longer able to fight against it. Peripheral blood stem cell or bone marrow transplant from a healthy person and injecting them into a cancer patient is being done to support a cancer patient's immunity for withstanding high levels of chemotherapy. In most patients, this type of treatment does begin with low-level chemotherapy and as healthy stem cells are introduced, higher doses of chemo are introduced.

Fighting RCC can be tough, but it is possible with some of the latest treatment options available today. Discuss with your oncologist about the best treatment course for helping you battle kidney cancer.