Renal cell cancer (RCC) is a disease of older people, the median age is 68 years for men and 71 years for women.¹
According to Statistics Austria, 1.370 people (897 men and 473 women) were newly diagnosed with malignant invasive RCC in 2018. This is more than 1.7 times as many as in the early 1980s.² RCC is among the top 10 cancers³ and is the third most common urologic tumor.⁴ Few patients show the classic symptoms (blood in the urine, flank pain, a palpable lump in the upper abdomen, or changes in blood counts that then lead to the diagnosis of RCC). Most renal tumors today are discovered incidentally during ultrasound examinations or computed tomography, which are often performed for entirely different reasons.⁴

Confirmed risk factors for RCC according to current evidence are smoking, obesity, and elevated blood pressure. Familial clustering may occur. The most effective preventive measures are abstinence from smoking and normalization of body weight.^1,5

Treatment is either surgical or medicinal depending on the type of RCC, its prognosis, spread (metastasis) if any, and patient-specific factors. For system therapy of metastatic RCC, so-called immune checkpoint inhibitors, VEGF inhibitors, tyrosine kinase inhibitors, mTOR inhibitors and multi-kinase inhibitors are used.¹

¹ Oncology Guideline Program. Consultation version S3 guideline Diagnostics, therapy and follow-up of renal cell carcinoma. Long version 3.01 (consultation version)– August 2021 AWMF-Registernummer: 043/017OL
² Statistik Austria. Kidney (C64) – Cancer incidence (new cases per year), Austria since 1983.
³ Statistik Austria. Austrian Cancer Registry (status: Dec. 17, 2020) and cause-of-death statistics. Cancer incidence and mortality (diagnosis period 2013-2017).
⁴ Austrian Society of Urology and Andrology. Patient information. Renal cell carcinoma. https://www.uro.at/patienten-informationen/patienten-ratgeber/52-das-nierenzellkarzinom.html (Accessed on 21.12.2021)
⁵ Urologist portal.de. Renal cell carcinoma (Dr. Arne Tiemann, 31.08.2020) https://www.urologenportal.de/patienten/patienteninfo/patientenratgeber/nierenzellkarzinom.html (Accessed on 21.12.2021)