CAIRO - Proper diagnosis and the right treatment are the things that are needed to improve the quality of life for patients with kidney cancer, say specialists. The drugs they need must also be taken in the right doses. Some of these drugs have side-effects which must be controlled, for example by reducing the dosage, they add. According to them, there are far fewer patients in Egypt with kidney tumours than other sorts of tumours. ”Breast cancer, the commonest sort of cancer, accounts for 25 per cent of all cancers, followed by lung and colon cancer,” said Dr Mohamed Abdullah, a professor of tumours at Qasr Al-Aini School of Medicine, Cairo University. According to the World Health Organisation, 1.9 per cent of people in Middle East, Africa and Asia suffer from kidney cancer, which is really very low. “It's vital for kidney cancer to be treated properly – and, of course, the sooner the problem's detected, the better,” added Dr Abdullah, during the International Conference on Tumours in Africa and Middle East, held in Cairo last week and attended by 250 specialists from 15 countries. “In advanced countries, the healthcare is better, which is why more people in the developing countries develop kidney problems and die from them,” he said. “But, in the Middle East, there may be fewer cases than people suspect, because regional countries don't have a national cancer registry which would give accurate figures. If we knew the real figures, this would help us to draw up a suitable strategy for diagnosis and treatment, and to estimate the funds we would need for this.”, according to Dr Abdullah. Dr Abdullah also regretted that in Egypt 60 per cent of kidney tumour cases are only diagnosed at an advanced stage. As for the symptoms of kidney cancer, he said they include blood in the patient's urine, accompanied by pain in the side, as well as weight loss and fever. “Anyone with these symptoms must go to the doctor, but the good news is that they don't necessarily mean that someone actually has cancer,” he said. According to him, kidney tumours are often attached to a lot of blood vessels and they don't respond effectively to the chemical and radiotherapy treatment that was first introduced in the 1980s.” “But there is now a new drug for target therapy, which stops the cancerous cells growing. It controls the disease in 40 per cent of cases and has already been approved by the Food Drugs Administration,” Dr Abdullah added. Dr Emad Hamada, a professor of tumours at Cairo University, said that treatment for kidney cancer had passed through several phases since the 1960s. “It started with chemical therapy which had many side-effects. Then there was immuno-therapy, which involved using interferon, and finally targeted therapy, which attacks the diseased cells and doesn't harm the sound cells,” he added. “Until five years ago, the available therapy – whether chemical or immune therapy – enabled patients with kidney cancer to live for only five months. But targeted therapy lets them live for perhaps a couple of years,” said Dr Hamada. “Although kidney cancer is not as common as breast or lung cancer, it can spread rapidly through the bodily organs, even reaching the brain. “Surgical treatment is only effective if the tumour is detected early, while medication has to be used in the advanced stages.”
