Kidney cancer stage designations give your physician a way of describing how far the disease has progressed. By knowing the stage, the doctor can begin to formulate a treatment plan.
The greatest value of assigning a stage is that it lets the doctor - and the patient - know how serious the disease has become and how far cancer cells have spread. The doctor needs to know whether cancer cells are confined to the kidneys, or have they spread to the adjacent adrenal glands, lymph nodes, or even to distant organs and tissues in the body. With this in mind, you can understand why knowing the stage is necessary for making a prognosis and designing a treatment regimen.
Doctors consider a range of factors in determining what stage renal ("renal" is a medical term for kidney) cancer has reached. After all tests and diagnostic tools have been examined, a stage will be assigned. Typically the numbers range from 1 to 4. Some medical professionals prefer to use Roman numbers (I through IV).
Knowing the stage can also give patients a reasonably reliable way to guess survival rates (which are usually based on 5-year intervals). There's no guarantee, of course, that someone whose cancer has been caught early will survive longer than someone diagnosed at a later stage. But obviously, someone with early stage kidney cancer has a better chance at longevity than someone who is diagnosed with a later stage.
The following offers basic descriptions of each stage.
Stage 1 - All cancer cells appear to be concentrated within a kidney and have not spread to adjacent glands, tissues or organs. The cancerous area is no bigger than 2.8 inches across (about 7 centimeters).
Stage 2 - At this stage, the cancer is still located only in the kidney, but it has grown larger than 2.8 inches.
Stage 3 - Kidney cancer is more complicated to treat at Stage 3 because it has spread to the adjacent adrenal gland or a major vein near the kidney. It may also be found in no more than one lymph node.
Stage 4 - At Stage 4, kidney cancer has reached a very dangerous point. The cancer has metastacized, meaning it has spread to other parts of the body and is affecting other tissues or possibly a distant organ. It can now also be found in more than one lymph node.
In addition to assigning a stage to kidney cancer, doctors may also designate a "grade." This is a further tool in defining the potential danger. The grade describes how cancer cells look when examined under a microscope.
If there's not much difference in appearance between the cancer cells and normal cells, a low grade will be designated. However, when there's a big difference in appearance between normal cells and abnormal cells, a higher grade will be designated. Grade determinations are an indicator of how aggressive the cancer is and how fast it is probably going to spread. Cancers that receive a higher grade typically spread more quickly, and are therefore more dangerous.
Summarizing, they greatest value in knowing the stage kidney cancer has reached is in giving the patient a prognosis and evaluating treatment options.
Kidney cancer occurs most often in adults who have reached 50 years of age, and it occurs twice as often to men as it does to women. Kidney cancer accounts for approximately 12,000 deaths every year in the United States, according to statistics released by the American Cancer Society. 30,000 new cases are diagnosed annually.
Hopefully, as research toward finding a cure goes forward, these numbers will come down. In the meantime, knowing the stage kidney cancer has reached in individual cases will be a valuable diagnostic tool in helping doctors save as many lives as possible.
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