Today we’re going to talk about kidney cancer. Cancer in general is uncontrolled cell growth. So if a kidney cell starts to grow out of control, it forms a tumor or a growth. Those terms are used interchangeably. That’s called kidney cancer.

Patients often want to know when they’re diagnosed with kidney cancer, is it on the kidney? Is it in the kidney? That’s a difficult question to answer, because it’s neither and it’s both. It’s sort of like asking, is the ice cream on the cone or in the cone? They’re one and the same because it started as a kidney cell. And what is the kidney?

We’re each born with two kidneys, although rarely, someone’s born with one, but generally speaking, we have two kidneys and their job is to filter the blood and make urine. Waste products get expelled into the urine. And the kidneys do a delicate job of maintaining our blood pressure, our salt and water balance in the body and our electrolyte balance. There’s two main parts of the kidney. The actual meat of the kidney, which is the substance of the kidney, and then there’s an inside urine chamber. When we talk about kidney cancer, we’re talking about cancers that form in the outside meaty bulk of the kidney.

Key Takeaways

1. Kidney cancer occurs when a kidney cell starts to grow out of control and forms a tumor or a growth.

2. We’re each born with two kidneys and their job is to filter the blood and make urine.

3. The kidneys do a delicate job of maintaining our blood pressure, our salt and water balance in the body and our electrolyte balance.

4. There’s two main parts of the kidney: the substance of the kidney and the inside urine chamber.

5. Kidney cancer forms in the outside substance of the kidney.