Treatment Center of America

amurillo63 said:

Treatment Options
Hi Jessi,
You should look into Cancer Control Society 323-663-7801 They can give you a list of hospitals and they can give you contact numbers of Cancer survivors that you can speak to personally. I hope you and your mom will find the best treatment hospital available. Iceman is correct the most important thing is to get the surgery done. That is probably the only good thing about Kidney Cancer is that if it has not spread then remove the kidney and your mom will be cancer free. If it has mets to the lungs then you will have some decissions to make regarding treatment when the time comes; But again first things first get the surgery behind you! I will keep you and your mom in my prayers. I hope you will let us know how it goes.
God Bless!
Anna

jchurchwell7 said:

Traetment Options
Anna,

Thank you for the information..it is nice to know that people care enough to talk to me. I will call the number you provided and see if I can get some advise. Mom mom is going to keep her appt at Emory for this coming week (doing the whole body scan) and I then I think we will talk to CTCA later in the week. We can just listen to what they have to say, it can't hurt.

I will definitely keep you in the loop with everything. Thank you so much for the prayers..I AM A FIRM BELIEVER IN THE POWER OF GOD!!

Anna, do you have RCC?

Jessi

HeartofSoul said:

JChurchwell, this is very
JChurchwell, this is very important. What stage is her RCC. ? It makes a big difference in treatment, especially with RCC, what the stage is (1, 2 , 3, or 4) . For one I would not go to CTCA as I have heard many disturbing stories of people who looked into them, many here on CSN boards. Emory or Cleveland Clinic would be a much better choice. Secondly, 2 weeks will not make a difference as the RCC is often a very slow growing cancer.

Treatment choices by stage

Stage I or stage II: Patients with stage I and II RCC most often have their cancers surgically removed by either radical or partial nephrectomy. Additional (adjuvant) chemotherapy, radiation therapy, or immunotherapy after surgery for stage I or stage II RCC is not recommended. Patients who are unable to tolerate kidney surgery because of other serious medical problems are often treated by experimental procedures such as cryoablation or arterial embolization. With surgical treatment, the 5-year survival for stage I patients is between 88% and 100% and the 5-year survival for stage II patients is between 63% and 67%.

Stage III: Radical nephrectomy is the most common treatment for stage III RCC. Sometimes, a patient will have an arterial embolization procedure in attempt to reduce the amount of bleeding during nephrectomy. If the cancer extends into nearby veins, the surgeon may need to cut open these veins and to completely remove the cancer. The 5-year survival for stage III patients varies widely and is between 40% and 80%, depending on the local extent of the cancer.

Stage IV: Stage IV RCC has spread too far away from the kidney to be cured by surgery. If the patient's general health is good enough to withstand the side effects of cytokine immunotherapy, this option offers the best opportunity and is now considered standard therapy by many doctors. Clinical trials of new forms of immunotherapy, combined immunotherapy and chemotherapy, new chemotherapy drugs, and other new therapies are other options.

For some patients, palliative treatments such as embolization or radiation therapy may be the best treatment. When one or a few metastases are present and the surgeon considers it possible to remove them without serious side effects, an aggressive surgical approach to removing the kidney tumor and these metastases may be beneficial. Unfortunately, most patients who appear to have only 1 or 2 metastases on imaging tests actually may have cancer that cannot be surgically resected. The 5-year survival for stage IV patients is less than 18


Summary of renal cell cancer AJCC (TNM) stages
Stage I: The tumor is 7 cm (about 2 3/4 inches) or smaller, and limited to the kidney. There is no spread to lymph nodes or distant organs.

Stage II: The tumor is larger than 7.0 cm but still limited to the kidney. There is no spread to lymph nodes or distant organs.

Stage III: There are several combinations of T and N categories that are included in this stage. These include tumors of any size, with or without spread to fatty tissue around the kidney, with or without spread into the large veins leading from the kidney to the heart, with spread to one nearby lymph node, but without spread to distant lymph node or other organs. Stage III also includes tumors with spread to fatty tissue around the kidney and/or spread into the large veins leading from the kidney to the heart, that have not spread to any lymph nodes or other organs.

Stage IV: There are several combinations of T, N, and M categories that included in this stage. This stage includes any cancers that have spread directly through the fatty tissue and the fascia ligament-like tissue that surrounds the kidney. Stage IV also includes any cancer that has spread to more than one lymph node near the kidney, to any lymph node not near the kidney, or to any other organs such as the lungs, bone, or brain.

Treatment of Renal Cell Carcinoma
Roughly half of all cases of renal cell carcinoma are successfully treated in early stages of the cancer. Once the disease has progressed to stage IV, however, prognosis is usually very challenging. The primary treatment for RCC involves some combination of surgery, targeted therapy and immunotherapy:

Immunotherapy: Immunotherapy is a new form of treatment that uses drugs called cytokines to stimulate the immune system, allowing it to more effectively attack cancerous cells. The use of cytokines has been shown to reduce tumor size in 10 percent to 20 percent of patients.

Surgery: Surgical treatment is the only treatment that is aimed at curing the disease in early stages, though it can also reduce pain in patients with more advanced RCC. The most common form of RCC surgery is radical nephrectomy, which removes the entire affected kidney, the attached adrenal gland and the tissues around the kidney. A partial nephrectomy removes only the part of the kidney that contains the cancer and is usually performed in patients with cancer in both kidneys or when the patient has only one kidney.

Targeted Therapy: Targeted therapy, another new approach, uses drugs to attack specific targets in the cancer cells. These drugs work to block molecules that stimulate the growth of tumors and prevent the development of new blood vessels that feed tumors.
Radiation therapy, chemotherapy and hormonal therapy are sometimes used to treat RCC but are less effective treatments

Below is a post by another member who had stage 4 RCC
I am new to this website and to this discussion board. In November 2004, I underwent a radical left nephrectomy for Stage 2 RCC. I received no further treatment at that time because I was told by the urologist who removed the kidney that kidney cancer was non-responsive to both chemotherapy and radiation therapy.

I continued to have regular CT Scans of the chest, pelvis and abdomen. However, I did ditch the urologist and started seeing an oncologist. Last Fall, almost 5 years out, I was diagnosed with Stage 4 RCC as the cancer was found in my lungs and a lymph node. I have since been treated with Avastin and Interferon Alpha; followed by Sutent (didn't tolerate this one well at all); and am currently on Nexavar. I had 20-37% shrinkage in the lung "nodules" on the Interferon and Avastin treatment. Also, the cancer is no longer visible in the lymph node.

I am responding well to the Nexavar, but my oncologist has recently revisited the option of Interleukin-2 treatments. He feels this may be a good option for me since there no longer appears to be lymph node involvement and since the nodules in my lungs are small. At this time, no other involvement has been diagnosed.

Has anyone undergone the high-dose Interleukin-2 treatment? If so, could you please share your experiences with this treatment with me? So far, I have not missed a single day of work due to my cancer treatments. I continue to keep a positive attitude, and my oncologist claims that I have "breezed through" the three treatments I've been on thus far.

Thanks for any insight you may offer.
Fighting

jchurchwell7 said:

Thanksgiving Report on Mom
Well here is the latest update. Yesterday my mom underwent a complete nephrectomy of her left kidney at CTCA in Chicago. The doctor took the adrenal gland as well as the fatty tissue around the kidney. He said that the nodes didn't look too swollen but he took whatever he saw to be infected with cancer.

My mom still has several small spots on her lungs as well as a small tumor on the ouitside of her right kidney. We won't know for sure if the are mets until we get the pathology on the left kidney and a biopsy of the lung nodules.

The doctor plans to biopsy the lungs next month as well as start her on chemo. He will probably also cut the tumor off her right kidey as well. They think that it may be a primary case of RCC.
We are hoping that the lung spots are not mets but we have to realize that they very likely are.

We obviously can't be sure without the path report or the lung biopsy but it is likely stage 4 (hopefully not tho).

Thank you all for the information. Happy Thanksgiving!!