Treatment Options for Kidney Cancer

Treating over 500 kidney cancer patients each year, Dana-Farber Brigham Cancer Center is ready to quickly treat your unique cancer with the highest standard of care. Our team is dedicated to finding the best care path for each patient, without delay, using the latest diagnostic and treatment tools. We provide a comprehensive full range of kidney cancer therapies, along with promising new treatments through clinical trials.                                           

With the results of your diagnostic tests and assigned cancer stage, our specialists from both Dana-Farber and Brigham and Women’s — including medical oncologists, radiation oncologists and surgical oncologists — will work closely together to develop a unique treatment plan that works best for your kidney cancer. We will ensure coordinated care, carefully monitoring and treating your cancer as well as helping to provide relief for your symptoms. Your care team will work together to organize your individualized health care plan to achieve the best possible outcomes for your cancer.

We want you to feel like you are an active participant in your care. Please talk to your care team about your treatment goals. Learn treatment-related questions to ask during your healthcare appointments. Our team works at the Dana-Farber and Brigham campuses in Boston, as well as locations in the surrounding community, and your appointments may be at one of these locations depending on the purpose of your visit.

Treatment options and the length of treatment vary from patient to patient. Treatment options are based on various factors, including your age, overall health, stage of cancer, disease aggressiveness, potential side effects and your personal preferences. Treatment commonly involves surgery.

Kidney cancer is more treatable today thanks to the most advanced surgical techniques, chemotherapies and targeted therapies. Our center is equipped with the latest tools, research and expertise. Our surgeons perform more than 250 kidney cancer surgeries each year. All kidney surgical operations are available at both Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Brigham and Women’s Faulkner Hospital, though the most complex are performed at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, and include the full range of minimally invasive (laparoscopic or robotic) techniques.

Non-Surgical Treatment Options

If you are not yet eligible for surgery, our team may work with you on other non-surgical treatment options, such as ablation therapy (also known as tumor ablation, this is a cancer treatment that destroys small tumors), immunotherapy (cancer treatments that use medicines to kill cancer cells or slow their growth), chemotherapy (cancer treatment that uses one or more medicines to kill cancer cells or shrink tumors), radiation therapy, as well as clinical trials and treatments for any symptoms you may have. Your care team will work to control the spread of your cancer and manage your symptoms.

Surgical Treatment Options

It is important that you choose an experienced medical team to treat your kidney cancer. Leading the way, with advanced training and years of practice are our urologic surgeons, who perform all of the surgery for urologic cancers at Dana-Farber Brigham Cancer Center. 

Learn more about kidney cancer surgical treatment options

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