Advances in Kidney Cancer Allow Less Invasive and More Personalized Care

Kidney cancer management has seen notable advances over the past several decades, reflecting both improved diagnostic capabilities and less invasive treatment approaches, according to Dr. Ravi Munver, who added that these developments have allowed clinicians to more accurately differentiate between tumors that require intervention and those that can be safely monitored.

In order to delve deeper into this topic, Munver sat down for an interview with CURE, in which, he highlights how treatment strategies have shifted from aggressive interventions toward more tailored approaches, prioritizing patient safety, organ preservation, and individualized care.

He is the vice chair of Urology at John Theurer Cancer Center and professor of Urology and chief of Minimally Invasive and Robotic Surgery at Hackensack University Medical Center in Hackensack, New Jersey.

Transcript

Can you provide an overview of the current landscape of kidney cancer treatment?

Kidney cancer treatment has evolved over the last few decades, and there has been a huge paradigm shift in how we treat it. For example, not all kidney cancers need to be treated. We are definitely looking more towards active surveillance for small renal masses that don't demonstrate growth.

We are also using renal mass biopsies, where we can sometimes tell if a tumor is benign versus cancerous. If a benign tumor is found, it does not need to be intervened upon with surgery or any other therapy. We then look at surgery for those cancers that we suspect are progressive, which means for patients who would benefit from having their tumors removed rather than waiting for these tumors to perhaps spread and metastasize.

The paradigm shift has really led us from doing maximally invasive surgery through big incisions to using minimally invasive surgeries with robotics. We can do both multi-port and single-port robotic surgeries, which means using multiple small keyhole incisions or one small keyhole incision, where we can remove tumors with the goal of preserving the kidney.

Transcript has been edited for clarity and conciseness.

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