EVALUATION OF ANTICANCER CHEMOTHERAPY AND IRRADIATION TREATMENT COMBINED WITH SURGERY FOR RENAL CELL CARCINOMA

Abstract

In 75 cases of renal cell cancer, in whom the original renal tumor was successfully removed, the effect of anticancer chemotherapy and irradiation was evaluated.
The following conclusion was obtained.
1) It is not necessary to give anticancer chemotherapy or postoperative radiotherapy in those cases whose erythrocyte sedimentation rates (ESR) were below 30 per hour.
2) On the other hand, in the cases showing ESR over 30 per hour, the combination of anticancer chemotherapy and irradiation with the operation revealed the best result.
3) In the cases ESR over 30 per hour, irradiation combined with the operation has brought better result when compared with the combined anticancer chemotherapy. It is likely that postoperative metastasis would occur following local recurrence and subsequently distant metastasis could be prevented by suppressing the activity of local remnants of cancer cells by radiotherapy.
4) As we do not have any anticancer agents specifically effective to renal cell carcinoma at present time, it would be recommended to make the best use of the current anticancer drugs by developing a simple and practical drug senstivity test for cancer and accordingly pick up appropriate drugs with which immunologically effective procedures could be also combined. Therefore, the authors have been investigating a new method of the new simple drug sensitivity test using C-8-adenine which was briefly described here.