Thanks to modern drugs, life can be significantly extended even in patients with advanced kidney cancer. The disease detected early, thanks to prophylactic ultrasound examinations, can be completely curable – said Prof. Cezary Szczylik on Wednesday at the press conference.
In Poland, about 4000 people get kidney cancer every year – almost 2/3 of them are men. The number of cases is growing by 2 – 3 percent annually, said Dr. Piotr Wysocki from the Medical University of Poznań.
According to him, there are more and more sick people, because the society is aging, but cancer is favored – apart from genetic determinants – by overweight, hypertension, a diet rich in fats, smoking, and nitrosamines contained in food and contaminated water. We don’t know all the risks yet. For example, the impact of the ubiquitous mobile phones on children’s health will not be known for many years to come, said Wysocki.
Kidney cancer is a malignant and hidden neoplasm, it occurs most often in people over 50 years of age. It often makes itself felt only when it is already advanced. Blood in the urine, pain in the lumbar region, loss of appetite, weight loss, inflammation of the urinary tract, sudden hypertension – all these can be symptoms of kidney cancer. The most effective way to detect this tumor is an ultrasound examination of the abdominal cavity, so it is worth doing it periodically – at least from the age of 40, and especially from the age of 60 – said Prof. Cezary Szczylik, head of the Oncology Clinic of the Central Teaching Hospital of the Military Medical Academy in Warsaw.
The primary method of fighting cancer is surgical removal of the kidney. However, when metastases occur (to the lungs, bones, central nervous system and liver), surgery is not enough. It is necessary to administer drugs, but classical cytostatics do not work in this disease. Also interferon alpha and interleukin 2 turned out to be ineffective, in addition toxic and expensive.
Modern drugs work only on cancer cells, without damaging healthy tissues. In kidney cancer, they disrupt the cell signaling mechanisms – the cancer cannot grow because no additional blood vessels are formed to nourish it. For example, bevacizumab, an antibody that removes VEGF, sunitinib, sorafenib, and pazopanib, which has recently been approved by the European Medicines Agency, acts on vascular endothelial cells. Tumor growth is also inhibited by everolimus and temsirolimus. Thanks to the administration of these preparations, the survival time of patients is even three to four times longer than that of the untreated, and the quality of life increases – the side effects are relatively small.
Until a few years ago, we could not help patients with metastatic kidney cancer. The more registered anti-cancer drugs, the better – said Prof. Szczylik. (PAP)