Kidney Cancer Symptoms

Mostly early kidney cancer is a silent disease. However, it might be accidentally picked up by an ultrasonic investigation for another illness and the cystic structure of a kidney tumor might be detected this way. However, most of the time the first sign might be blood in the urine or pain in the flank of one side of the body. Other patients might present with tiredness from anemia. There might be a surprise tumor calcification that shows up in the process of investigation of what was thought to be a lower back pain.

 There might be a fever of unknown origin. Later this may be explained as a fever as a result of the reaction of the body to tumor proteins that are released into the blood stream.

This is also the reason for weight loss, as the appetite is suppressed by these substances. Symptoms of metastases depend on where the cancer has gone into. With bone metastases there are bone pains and a bone scan shows abnormal uptake in these painful areas where the pain is. In the case of liver metastases there is often jaundice and right upper abdominal pain followed by fluid collection (called"ascites") in the abdomen (Ref. 1).

Disclaimer

This outline is only a teaching aid to patients and should stimulate you to ask the right questions when seeing your doctor. However, the responsibility of treatment stays in the hands of your doctor and you.

References

1. Cancer: Principles &Practice of Oncology.4th edition. Edited by Vincent T. DeVita, Jr. et al. Lippincott, Philadelphia,PA, 1993. Chapter on Cancer of the kidney and ureter.

2. Cancer: Principles&Practice of Oncology. 5th edition, volume 1. Edited by Vincent T. DeVita, Jr. et al. Lippincott-Raven Publ., Philadelphia,PA, 1997. Chapter on Cancer of the kidney and ureter.

3. D Baris et al. Am J Ind Med 2001 May;39(5):463-476.

4. A Heiser et al. Cancer Res 2001 Apr 15;61(8):3388-3393.

5. A Gati et al. Cancer Res 2001 Apr 15;61(8):3240-3244.

6. P Lissoni et al. Anticancer Res 2001 Jan-Feb;21(1B):777-779.

7. X Guo et al. Cancer Res 2001 Mar 15;61(6):2774-2781.

8. A Bergstrom et al. Int J Cancer 2001 Apr 1;92(1):155-157.

9. Conn's Current Therapy 2004, 56th ed., Copyright © 2004 Elsevier

10. Ferri: Ferri's Clinical Advisor: Instant Diagnosis and Treatment, 2004 ed., Copyright © 2004 Mosby, Inc

Last Modified: Dec. 30, 2008