When Niki Ridge started having night sweats and a cough, she saw her doctor, thinking the sweats might be related to the hormone replacement therapy she was having for menopause. Her doctor agreed, but sent her for a chest X-ray to explore the cough. “Kidney cancer can be a bit of a b****r,” says Ridge, a 57-year-old mother of two teenage boys living in the United Kingdom.
“It is often found incidentally, when people are having other medical investigations.” She pinpoints the big problem with kidney cancer: “Symptoms are usually associated with advanced disease.” Kidney cancer is also referred to as renal cancer.
Around 80 per cent of kidney cancers are renal cell cancers that start in cells in one of the kidneys’ nephrons, that filter the blood and make urine. Early kidney cancers are generally asymptomatic, says Dr Ngo Chang-chung, a specialist in urology at Hong Kong’s CUHK Medical Centre. “Many are discovered during ultrasound scans for routine check-ups or through CAT scans done as investigations for other complaints,” he says.
A study published in the peer-reviewed medical journal The BMJ found that 60 per cent of kidney cancer patients were diagnosed incidentally: 87 per cent of those with stage 1a – the earliest stage – were found incidentally, as were 36 per cent with stage 3 or 4 disease. Patients who have symptoms usually have poorer outcomes, since symptoms do not usually occur until the disease is advanced. These may include kidney pain, h.