EVERYONE Diagnosed with Kidney Cancer should listen - AUA Renal Mass Webinar (Part II)

Stage 1 tumours
Why do you think so, Georjean? I don't think I agree, for reasons I'll give below. You've posted a number of links in the past, invariably with no discussion. Are you in a medical discipline yourself? We don't seem to know anything about you. Were you cured of RCC? I certainly hope so. If so, it would be nice to know the history of your treatment and any insights you can offer about it.

I watched both videos with interest. They are cogent and well-illustrated with slides. However, they will be of only academic interest to most patients since they won't have very early-stage, small tumours.

What conclusions did you take from the talks that you considered to be so important? There was care not to make too much of many of the studies and to avoid drawing conclusions where there were obvious confounding factors. The main messages I got were that for this small category of patients (with small, stage 1 lesions):-

Open surgery is better than laparoscopic in terms of likelihood of recurrence
Surgery is better (when practicable)than other physical modalities for the same reason
Nonetheless, there is an important role for those other modalities
Among those, cryoablation appears somewhat preferable to RFA
Partial nephrectomy, when appropriate, is far preferable to radical

I think there's a major caveat to be entered, namely that this is all based on (comparatively) old data. Techniques, such as robotic lap ones, have changed the face of surgery and advances in all of these methods may have changed the validity of the appraisals to a greater or lesser degree.