How Is Renal Medullary Carcinoma Diagnosed?
More Programs and Publications Featuring Dr. Kimryn Ratthmell
In this program:
Renal medullary carcinoma can be challenging to diagnose. Watch as expert Dr. Kimryn Rathmell from Vanderbilt University Medical Center shares specific challenges with RMC diagnosis and symptoms that may be warning signs of RMC.
Transcript
Dr. Kimryn Rathmell:
The diagnosis of renal medullary carcinoma can be really challenging for a couple of reasons. One is that it's a young patient population who isn't thinking about cancer, it's one thing for an individual in their 60s to have blood in their urine, for example, and immediately for the doctor, the family to think, “Oh, I need to think about cancer,” that's not as true in younger adults. The diagnosis is typically made by imaging like a CAT scan. The kidneys are really deep in the middle of us, it's hard for a tumor that grows that might even be quite sizable to be helpful even in a skinny person. So you usually don't find this kind of cancer unless it causes some pain and that prompts someone to do some imaging. So the medulla is the last place that the urine goes before it leaves the kidney, so it's a little more likely to cause bleeding, so blood in the urine is the other major finding that would tip somebody off.
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