What Are The Four Kidney Cancer Stages?

Kidney cancer stages are a recognized way of describing the level of progress of a kidney cancer case. By knowing the stage, the doctor can begin to formulate a treatment plan.

Knowing the stage gives both the doctor and the patient a firm idea of how serious the disease has become and how much the cancer has spread beyond the kidneys. Is there a malignant tumor located only in a kidney, or have cancer cells broken away and reached surrounding glands and lymph nodes? Have they even reached distant organs? You can certainly see why this kind of information is critical to choosing treatment options that are most likely to lead to the best possible outcome.

There are a variety of evaluations made in assigning a stage to an individual's kidney cancer. Typically, a number between one and four will be assigned after a diagnosis has been made with the help of tests and other information. Some doctors will use Roman numerals (I, II, III, or IV), but this practice is more common among medical professionals than with the public at large.

Knowing the stage can also give kidney cancer patients a reasonably reliable way to guess survival rates (which are usually based on 5-year intervals). There's no way to accurately predict longevity in every case because there can be so many variables. But it makes sense that someone whose cancer has been detected in an early stage has a better chance of long-term survival than someone who is diagnosed at a later stage.

The following offers basic descriptions of each kidney cancer stage.

Stage 1 - The cancer is "localized," meaning that no cancer cells have broken off and spread to surrounding tissues or organs. The size of the tumor is no more than 7 centimeters (about 2.8 inches).

Stage 2 - This is a stage in which the cancerous area has grown and is now larger than 2.8 inches or 7 centimeters. But cancerous cells have not spread to other organs or parts of the body. The cancer is still located only in a kidney.

Stage 3 - Cancerous cells have spread beyond the kidney at this stage. They may have reached the adrenal gland (which rests above each kidney), or a major blood vessel near the kidney. Cancer may also be found in no more than one lymph node. Treatment at Stage 3 becomes more difficult and complicated.

Stage 4 - At Stage 4, kidney cancer has reached a very dangerous point. The malignancy has spread to more than one lymph node, or possibly to a distant organ (metastasis).

The stage system is not the only method of evaluating the danger posed by kidney cancer. Doctors can also assign a "grade" that is a further indication of the level of danger. The grade is a comparison of the way cancer cells look under magnification compared to normal kidney cells.

If the cells being examined don't appear to be much different from normal cells, a lower grade is assigned. However, when there's a big difference in appearance between normal cells and abnormal cells, a higher grade will be designated. Grade designations are important to know because they often indicate how quickly the cancer may spread. Treatment decisions are based partially on grade designations because the higher the grade, the more likely the cancer is to spread quickly (making quick treatment more important).

Summarizing, the greatest value in knowing the stage kidney cancer has reached is in giving the patient a prognosis and evaluating treatment options.

In general, kidney cancer is more common among those who have passed their fiftieth birthday, and it happens twice as often to men as it does to women. Around 30,000 new cases of kidney cancer are diagnosed every year in the U.S., and there are about 12,000 deaths attributed to it annually.

Everyone is hopeful, of course, that these numbers will decrease as research progresses toward a cure. But until that happens, using the kidney cancer stage and grade systems will provide medical professionals with valuable tools in saving as many lives as possible.