Managing Symptoms, Controlling Disease With Radiation in Kidney Cancer

Radiation may be an effective treatment option to manage symptoms and control disease in patients with renal cell carcinoma, a type of kidney cancer, an expert said.

CURE® spoke with Dr. Chad Tang at the 2024 ESMO Congress to learn more about the indications for which radiation may be considered in patients with renal cell carcinoma. Tang is an associate professor in the Department of Radiation Oncology at The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston.

Transcript:

I think there are two big categories for patients where radiation could be helpful. No. 1 is when a spot of cancer, such as in the bone or in the brain, is causing symptoms or threatening to cause symptoms such as close to the nerve routes in the spine. Radiation is minimally invasive. There won’t be any cutting or poking or prodding of the patient, so you can easily and effectively apply their radiation therapy sequenced with whatever drug therapy your medical oncologist has you on to alleviate or prevent the symptoms from recurring. That’s one category.

The second category is controlling the disease. Renal cell carcinoma is a disease that is known to evolve a lot. So different sites to the body can be very different genetically than other sites. And sometimes they evolve in a way that makes them resistant to the drug therapy or they’re so slow in their growth. In those instances, when it’s just a local site that’s causing problems because it’s resistant or only the site growing, we can take care of that site with radiation therapy, often with a very short course, and give you more time on the current drug that your medical oncologist has you on or buy you time off the drug.

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