Top 10 Most Asked Questions about Kidney Cancer PART 2
Here is the Top 10 Most Asked Questions about Kidney Cancer PART 2.
Q3. What is the best treatment option for late stage kidney cancer?
As we mentioned in question 1, no two people are exactly alike, treatment and responses to treatment vary greatly. As we cannot tell how long a particular patient with advanced kidney cancer has, no one can simply tell you what is the best treatment option for you.
After the cancer is found and staged, your doctor will discuss your treatment options with you. It is important to take time and think about your possible choices. The factors need to be considered such as the type of kidney cancer (mostly clear cell RCC), stage (“advanced” means stage4 here, metastasis in more than 1 regional lymph node or distant metastasis) and tumor size and location, age and general health state.
Your treatment options may include surgery, radiation therapy, chemotherapy, targeted cancer therapy, biologic therapy, hormone therapy or some combinations of these.
A surgery should be considered first, it is the initial treatment commonly used in with renal cell carcinoma patients. The surgery that either removes parts of the kidney, or the entire kidney is called nephrectomy. If the main tumor is removable but the cancer has spread extensively elsewhere, removing the kidney may still be helpful. This would likely be followed by systemic therapy, which might consist of one of the targeted therapies or cytokine therapy (interleukin-2 or interferon). However, numbers of patients with advanced kidney cancer cannot have surgery, if you cannot have surgery, you may benefit from other local treatments such as cryoablation (which is the use of extreme cold to freeze and destroy cancer cells), radiofrequency ablation (which is the use of electrodes to heat and destroy cancer cells), or arterial embolization (As palliative treatment, this procedure cuts off blood supply to the tumor). In rare cases where the main tumor appears to be removable and the cancer has only spread to one other area (such as to one or a few spots in the lungs), surgery to remove both the kidney and the metastasis may be an option if a person is in good enough health state. Otherwise, treatment with one of the targeted therapies would probably be the first option.
Sunitinib (Sutent), sorafenib (Nexavar), everolimus (Affinitor), temsirolimus (Torisel), and bevacizumab (Avastin) are some of the latest targeted cancer drugs, and they are FDA approved. According to researchers at Duke, a combination of two drugs works better than either drug for patients with renal cell carcinoma, such as interferon alpha and sorafenib.
Chemotherapy is not a standard treatment for the commonest type of kidney cancer – renal cell carcinoma. It is not as good at treating kidney cancer as some other treatments such as biological treatments. As well as radiation therapy, however radiation therapy can work as a combination with targeted therapy or immunotherapy, such as a combination of 3D-CRT and Sutent or other targeted drugs. And radiation can be a neoadjuvant treatment to shrink tumour before surgery.
In considering your treatment options it is often a good idea to seek a second opinion, if possible. This may provide you with more information and help you feel more confident about the treatment plan you have chosen.
Q4. What should I know about diet and nutrition if I have kidney cancer?
The kidneys are a pair of bean-shaped organs that that filter the blood, excreting the end-products of body metabolism in the form of urine, and regulating the concentrations of hydrogen, sodium, potassium, phosphate, and other ions in the extracellular fluid.
People who were diagnosed kidney cancer should receive specialized nutritional advice from doctor or a trained professional.
There are a few principles you need to follow:
If you smoke, you really should try to stop. Smoking has been linked to many cancers, including kidney cancer. As well as alcoholic drink, heavy drinking will cause kidney damage eventually.
A high protein diet has been linked to kidney disease, including cancer, most protein-rich foods are also rich in animal fats, so eating a diet lower in protein may help you to maintain a healthy weight too. To eat more healthily, try to increase your intake of fresh fruit and vegetables and not eat so much protein. Protein containing foods include: Meat and fish, Eggs, Cheese, butter and milk, Beans, lentils and soybeans. Avoid any foods with high purine, high fat, such as pork liver. Avoid Processed Meats. Processed meat refers to meats preserved by smoking, curing or salting, or by the addition of preservatives, such as ham, bacon, salami, hot dogs and sausages.
Try to cut down on the amount of salt you add to your food. A high salt intake puts a strain on the kidneys (it is not good for your heart either).
Do not eat only one or few kinds of food you particularly like. Eat various foods every meal.
Do not take supplements unless your doctor asks you to. Nutrient-rich whole foods contain substances that are necessary for good health – such as fiber, vitamins, minerals and phytochemicals, the best source of nourishment is food and drink, not dietary supplements. In fact, with kidney cancer, high-dose supplements could do more harm than good.
If you just had your surgery, being very weak or having side-effects of certain drugs and don’t want to eat (such as Nausea, Taste changes), you can take nutritional powder/shake as a nutrition supply, such as Abbott Ensure Enteral Nutritional Powder (Total Protein Enteral Nutritional Powder), if you have diabetes, try Abbott glucerna SR instead.
Purchase Ensure Nutritional Shakes
The recommendations in this publication can also reduce the risk of other chronic diseases such as heart disease and diabetes.
In Traditional Chinese Medical science, the following foods are recommended for kidney cancer patients, they tonify kidneys qi and provide nutrition for kidney cancer patients.
Carrots, peas, Towel Gourds, bean sprouts, Mushrooms, Eleocharis tuberosa, coix seeds, barley, mulberries, ducks, Aristichthys nobilis,
river crabs, river prawns, yam, quails, black fungus, red jujubes, longans (Avoid if you have diabetes), Chinese wolfberries, pears, kiwifruits, watermelons, Wax Gourds, mung beans, green tea. (According to the American Cancer Society green tea has been used to treat adenocarinomas, bladder cancer, liver cancer, kidney cancer, leukemia, oral leukoplakia, ovarian cancer, breast cancer, prostate cancer, cancers of the digestive tract and bone marrow diseases. ).
Learn more about Chinese Nutrition Therapy: Dietetics in Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM)
A few books you should read:
Nothing to Fear: The Key to Cancer Survival
Kidney Cancer (Cancer Treatment and Research)
