Kidney cancer

Treatment

Mayo Clinic doctors will try to preserve as much of your existing kidney function as possible while still eliminating the cancer. Your team of specialists will assess your needs and preferences to determine the best approach for treating your kidney cancer.

In addition to standard treatments for kidney cancer, Mayo Clinic is a leader in these treatments:

• Partial nephrectomy. Surgery is the most common treatment for kidney cancer. Mayo Clinic specializes in performing partial nephrectomy, a surgery that removes only the tumor and not the entire kidney. Doctors elsewhere might be less experienced with this procedure, but specialists at Mayo Clinic are highly experienced in its use and will use it to preserve your kidney function, if possible.
• Surgery for locally advanced and metastatic tumors. Urologists at Mayo Clinic lead multispecialty surgical teams and have expertise managing tumors involving nearby organs and those that have spread to other areas (metastatic tumors), even to major veins or the heart. This approach allows Mayo Clinic surgeons to offer tumor removal in some cases where surgery was not considered possible.
• Minimally invasive surgical techniques. Mayo Clinic surgeons have extensive experience with laparoscopic (including laparoscope-assisted ablation) and robot-assisted surgical approaches.
• Ablation. Ablation is the removal of tumors with intense heat or cold, or with chemicals. Mayo Clinic surgeons are among the world's most experienced at using heat (radiofrequency) and cold (cryoablation) to destroy kidney tumors

Read more about kidney cancer treatment.