The kidneys are two bean-shaped organs that sit on either side of the body, just underneath the ribcage. The main role of the kidneys is to filter out waste products from the blood before converting it into urine.
Usually, only one of the kidneys is affected by cancer.
Kidney cancer
There are a number of different types of cancer than can affect the kidneys. The most common type is known as renal cell carcinoma (RCC), which accounts for 90% of all kidney cancers.
Rarer types of kidney cancer include transitional cell cancer, and Wilms’ tumour, which is a rare type of kidney cancer that affects children.
This article deals with renal cell carcinoma, and the term ‘kidney cancer’ will be used to refer to RCC. See the ‘external links’ section for more information about rarer types of kidney cancer.
How common is kidney cancer?
Kidney cancer accounts for 3% of all adult cancers. In 2004, there were 5,745 newly diagnosed cases of kidney cancer in England and Wales.
Cancer of the kidneys most commonly affects adults who are between 50-80 years of age. Men are twice as likely to be affected by kidney cancer compared with women.
Since the 1970s, the rate of new cases of kidney cancer has been steadily rising by around 2% a year. Some experts have suggested that the continuous rise in new cases of kidney cancer may be due to the increase in the number of people who are obese.
Prognosis
One of the challenges in treating kidney cancer is that it does not cause any symptoms until it reaches an advanced stage, by which time a cure is often not possible and the prognosis is poor.
However, it is possible to prolong the life of someone with kidney cancer through the use of medication.
As a result of advances in imaging technologies, such as ultrasound, and computerised tomography (CT) scans, an increasing number of cases of kidney cancer are now detected in the early stages, often during tests for other, unrelated conditions.
If cancer of the kidney is detected in its early stages, a surgical cure may be possible. This usually involves removing some, or all, of the affected kidney.
