Kidney Cancer Survival Rate
What Is the Kidney Cancer Survival Rate?
 The kidney cancer survival rate depends on a number of
different factors related to both the individual patient and to the kidney cancer itself.
In estimating a kidney cancer survival rate, medical researchers must consider a general range
of variables, including the type of cancer, the stage, the grade, and the location. There are also influential
variables that are specific to each patient, including age, general health, and individual response to
treatment.
This said, medical researchers have been able to come up with general kidney cancer survival
rate numbers. The statistics in this article focus on the most common type of cancer of the kidney, which is known
as renal cell carcinoma.
Calculations for the kidney cancer survival rate are expressed as a percentage of patients with
a certain type of kidney cancer which has reached a certain stage (see kidney cancer stages). Statistically, patients with kidney cancer of a certain type at a
certain stage may generally expect to survive for at least a certain period of time after being diagnosed.
Of course, as is the case with most studies, the kidney cancer survival rate is based on analysis of a large number
of patients. It's impossible to accurately predict outcomes for every individual.
The standard survival rate used for cancer of the kidney (and many other diseases) is a
five-year interval. In other words, a certain percentage of kidney cancer patients will still be alive five years
after their diagnosis. The percentage does not consider whether the patient still has kidney cancer, or whether he
or she is completely in remission or free of symptoms. It only reports whether or not the patient is still
alive.
There are different ways to calculate kidney cancer statistics. The numbers below are based on a measure of the
survival of kidney cancer patients in comparison to the general population. The time period in this study was
1995-2001.
The overall kidney cancer survival rate for this period was 64.6 percent.
Broken down by race and gender, the numbers were:
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64.7 percent for Caucasian men
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64.5 percent for Caucasian women
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61.8 percent for African American men
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65.9 percent for African American women.
It's also important to consider how far the disease has progressed in calculating a survival
rate. The degree of progress is known as the kidney cancer stage.
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53 percent of kidney cancer cases are diagnosed while the cancer can only be found in the kidney. It
has not spread to other parts of the body (metastasis).
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20 percent of cases are discovered after cancer has spread to lymph nodes or directly beyond the
primary area (known as the regional stage).
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22 percent after has already metastasized in another organ or area of the body (the distant stage).
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Staging information was unknown for the remaining percentage.
As you would expect, a higher percentage of patients whose kidney cancer was diagnosed in the
earlier stages typically survived the longest. Other kidney cancer statistics include the following:
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