Follow-up principles after curative treatment in renal cancer

Renal cell cancer constitutes 3% of all cancer, but one-third of patients have metastatic disease at the time of the diagnosis. In the quite risky cancer, radical or partial nephrectomies (in suitable cases) provide the highest probability of curing on patients with kidney cancer. Although this aggressive methods, approximately one-third of the patients will encounter distant or local recurrences late some time after the surgical approach. The purpose of follow-up after curative treatment is to evaluate postoperative complications of surgery, residual renal function and also determine recurrences at local or contralateral kidney and distant metastatic disease. In literature, although there are some articles which discuss how to do a surgical follow-up, there is no such standard acceptance among how often they should be done and which courses to follow. Nowadays, there are articles suggesting that the follow-up should be customized to suit both the patient and the present tumor. This article will try to provide a clear point of view as to how to create an ideal follow-up scheme with discussing the factors that may play a leading role in kidney cancer follow-ups, in the light of current literature.