Kidney cancer is malignant cell growth within kidney tissue. The medical term for this type of cancer is “renal cell cancer”. Kidney cancer has a rate of 3-4% among all cancer types, and the average age of diagnosis in our country is 64 years. Recently, with the widespread use of imaging methods such as ultrasonography and computed tomography (CT) all over the world, there has been an increase in the early diagnosis of kidney tumors.
Related risk factors can be listed as follows: depending on the dose and duration smoked, smoking, obesity, hypertension, family history of kidney cancer, occupational exposure (trichlorethylene), male gender (2 times more common than women), intensive use of acetaminophen (a type of painkiller) and Some genetic disorders such as von Hippel-Lindau disease may be diagnosed.
There is no method yet to prevent the development of kidney cancer. National and international health authorities do not recommend screening for kidney cancer. However, individuals with a family history of kidney cancer, especially at an early age due to genetic diseases, are excluded from this recommendation. These people are recommended to be evaluated with ultrasonography at an early age
Since our kidneys are organs located deep in the body, kidney cancers may not cause symptoms until the advanced stages of the disease. For this reason, the classic symptoms of the disease, such as flank pain, palpable mass, and blood in the urine, are rarely seen in patients and in the advanced stages of the disease. In addition, fatigue, loss of appetite and unexplained fever may occur. Nowadays, kidney tumors are mostly detected incidentally during imaging performed for other reasons.
