What are the symptoms of kidney cancer ?

Kidney cancer is most often a silent disease that presents no clinical signs. As a result, the majority of kidney cancers are discovered incidentally during imaging examinations such as an ultrasound, CT scan, or MRI performed for another reason.

Sometimes, the presence of blood in the urine can indicate kidney cancer, provided it is present throughout urination, is insidious, spontaneous, intermittent, painless, and recurrent.

However, many other conditions can cause blood in the urine, so it should prompt concern for both the patient and their doctor. Similarly, the presence of back pain should also be a warning, even though such pain is relatively common and can have multiple causes.

More rarely, general symptoms such as fatigue, which may or may not be associated with a drop in red blood cells, weight loss, hypertension that becomes poorly controlled with standard treatments, fever, night sweats, or malaise may reveal kidney cancer, but these symptoms can also be associated with other conditions.