Leading Kidney Cancer Treatment

Options for your personalized care plan to treat kidney cancer.

When you have kidney cancer, you want the most effective treatment. Our team of kidney cancer specialists – urologists, surgeons, medical oncologists, radiation oncologists and pathologists – meet as part of a tumor board [URL what to expect] to create a personalized treatment plans that is unique to your cancer type and stage, along with your priorities for care.

Your treatment plan will likely include one of these options:

• Minimally invasive robot-assisted surgery, including kidney-sparing nephrectomy
• Cryoablation, a non-surgical treatment that destroys kidney tumors by freezing them
• Radiation therapy, using world-first MRI guided radiation therapy to treat kidney tumors in patients with medical issues that make them ineligible for traditional treatments
• Clinical trials, research studies that may give you access to advanced therapies that are not yet available elsewhere

While most patients treated at Henry Ford are candidates for kidney-sparing surgery, some patients may need total removal of the affected kidney (and often the nearby adrenal gland) through open surgery. Open surgery traditionally requires a large surgical incision to remove the kidney – but our team takes a minimally invasive approach to this procedure, whenever possible.

We also have several innovative approaches to treat metastatic kidney cancer, including chemotherapy, minimally invasive surgery and clinical trials, or a combination of these options.

For patients with smaller tumors, particularly for those who are elderly with comorbidities, our team may recommend cryoablation as treatment, or watchful waiting (active surveillance), which involves monitoring the symptoms of kidney cancer

It’s important that you understand your diagnosis and treatment options. We’ll go over with you all these details and our recommendations for your treatment plan during your first appointment, so you know what to expect.