Kidney Lesions
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Conclusion
Treatment of renal cell carcinoma (RCC) is highly successful in early stage cases and sometimes results in prolonged disease-free survival even in patients with metastatic lesions (1-6). There is a trend toward kidney sparing surgery in patients with small tumors, and increasing use of nonsurgical ablative approaches (1,3,4,5, 7-11).
While there is some evidence that RCC is “resistant” to conventional radiotherapy doses (14), particularly for brain lesions (12,13,16), there is a substantial body of literature demonstrating local control rates in excess of 90% for renal cell carcinoma lesions targeted with stereotactic radiosurgery or large dose per treatment (hypofractionated) stereotactic radiotherapy (23-27).
As the only system capable of tracking respiratory-induced moving targets such as the kidney with radiosurgical precision, CyberKnife® appears uniquely capable of ablating focal tumor lesions within the kidney itself, in RCC patients for whom surgery is not an option (28). Due to its robust dose sculpting and target tracking capability, CyberKnife® radiosurgery is also appropriately applied to ablate a range of locally recurrent, unresectable and metastatic RCC lesions (23-27).
Case Studies:
- Spinal Cord Metastasis
(L-1 from Renal Cell Carcinoma) - Peter Gerszten, M.D., Steve Burton, M. D. - UPMC
- Posterior Fossa
Metastatic Renal Cell Carcinoma - Debra Freeman, M.D., Paul D. Dernbach, M.D. - NCH
Renal Cell Carcinoma
Written by Donald B. Fuller, M.D. – Radiation Oncologist