Is Remission Possible for Kidney Cancer
… Continued …
The cancer stage is not the only one. The possibility to have remission after treatment for kidney cancer also depends on other factors such as the cancer grade, cancer type, overall health and age of patient!
Kidney cancer grade
The grade points to how the cancer cells look like! A sample of tissue affected by the cancer is removed and then closely observed under the microscope. With this way, the cancer cells are compared to normal cells according to the appearance and size of their control center (nucleus).
Cancer cells that look like normal cells have lower grade score. On the other hand, if they look more abnormal, they have greater grade score.
The greater score of the cancer grade means the cancer is likely to become aggressive (grow more quickly) and more difficult to treat – and also likely to come back after treatment. The cancer grade can help estimate how the cancer will behave.
The type of kidney cancer
There are a number of different types of primary cancer growing in the kidney. While some types are likely to grow more quickly and become more aggressive, other types may develop more slowly. For more information about types of kidney cancer, see this section!
How well you are!
Your general health may also have contribution to affect the prognosis of your cancer. For instances:
- It plays a part of how well you are to look after yourself. The cancer may cause discomfort symptoms such as extreme tiredness, fever, or weight loss. If you’re not well enough, you may need more day to day help from others.
- Each treatment for cancer has pros and cons. How well you are can also affect the kind of cancer treatment you can take – there may be particular treatments that you cannot take.
Age
The age of patient may also have an effect. Younger patients are likely to have better n-year survival rate (living slightly longer) if compared to older patients. This issue is not fully known, but some experts believe that younger age means better general health and the cancer treatments working better.
Spontaneous remission, a condition in which the tests show a reversal in the progression of the cancer –or– a significantly measurable reduction in the size of the tumor with inadequate treatment /even without treatment, is very rare in most types of cancer.
But kidney cancer is one of the few exceptions because spontaneous remissions are well documented in here. In fact, it often responds with immunotherapy /biological therapy (a treatment to boost the body immune system in fighting against the cancer cells) – even it may be one of the cancers most susceptible to biological therapy.
Unfortunately spontaneous remission in cancer is not full known yet. Even many experts prefer using ‘radical’ to ‘spontaneous’. Because most patients with spontaneous remission are also actively doing something to facilitate recuperation!
- http://www.webmd.com/cancer/remission-what-does-it-mean
- http://www.noetic.org/research/projects/spontaneous-remission/faqs
- http://cancerguide.org/rcc_metastatic.html
I was diagnosed with metastatic renal cell carcinoma or kidney cancer, for it was in my left kidney and they removed that, but a year or so later it has spread to my right adrenal gland meaning it went from my left side to my right side. They removed the adrenal gland and now I show no signs of the cancer so am I cured? My oncologist or my newest one told me to quit or I could stop Votrient which I was taking. It was making me more sick than before so dropped down from 4 tablets and later on 3 tablets to 2 tablets a day so is this good advice or should I still be taking it? He said I could restart it later on but my concern is it is so expensive, and any lapse in getting refills might screw me up so kind of concerned if I let the prescription lapse I may not get it as cheap as I have been now?
Also concerned it may come back to another organ so…?
My Dr. who did the adrenal removal operation said I don’t have any other organs I can spare now so…? So now I have had two major surgeries one my left kidney was totally removed and second my right adrenal gland totally removes so…?