Radiation Therapy For Renal Cell Carcinoma

Radiation therapy is often used to help with symptoms of kidney cancer or in patients who cannot have surgery.

Radiation therapy for renal cell carcinoma.

Radiation therapy is used only if a patient cannot have surgery and even then usually only on areas where the cancer has spread and not on the primary kidney tumor. Stereotactic radiosurgery and stereotactic body radiation therapy sbrt have led to a resurgence of the use of radiotherapy in the management of advanced renal cell carcinoma rcc. Often rcc has no initial symptoms. These techniques provide excellent local control and palliation of metastatic sites of disease with minimal toxicity.

But it might be an option if you can t have surgery. Radiation doesn t work very well on kidney cancer. Radiation therapy may be given before during or after these other treatments to improve the chances that treatment will work. Renal cell carcinoma rcc is a type of kidney cancer.

Your healthcare team will consider your personal needs to plan the type and amount of radiation and when and how it is given. It uses high energy x rays or other types of radiation to kill cancer cells or halt. You can receive the therapy in one to five daily treatments and igrt works well with chemotherapy or between chemotherapy cycles. The radiation dose is precise and very concentrated which is the best way to eliminate kidney cancer cells.

Learn about the treatment options for kidney cancer. When radiation therapy is used to treat kidney cancer it is usually external beam therapy ebrt which focuses radiation on the cancer. Radiation therapy uses high energy rays or particles to destroy cancer cells. Radiation is sometimes used to treat kidney cancer if a person is not healthy enough to have surgery or has only one kidney.

Surgery targeted therapy immunotherapy chemotherapy radiation therapy and more. This treatment uses high energy x rays to kill cancer cells. It is sometimes used to treat kidney cancer. Sometimes other treatments will be tried first instead.

The timing of when radiation therapy is given depends on the type of cancer being treated and whether the goal of radiation therapy is to treat the cancer or ease symptoms. Read about survival rates treatment and stages. It is very rarely used alone to treat kidney cancer because of the damage it causes to the healthy kidney.