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To calculate the kidney cancer survival rate, you must take several different factors into consideration. Generally speaking, these factors are related to the patient who has been diagnosed with kidney cancer, and the kidney cancer stage..

In gathering their survival rate statistics, researchers take the type of cancer, stage, grade and location into consideration. Factors regarding the patient that must be considered include the individual's age, general health, and ability to undergo necessary treatment.

Using data reflecting these factors in recent decades, medical researchers have been able to generate some statistics for kidney cancer survival rates. Just one type of kidney cancer is shown below, but it is far more common than any other variety. It is known as renal cell carcinoma.

When the kidney cancer survival rate is calculated, it's most often expressed as a percentage. That is, it's statistically normal for a certain percent of patients who have the same type of cancer at approximately the same stage to still be alive after a defined period of time.

It should be said that the kidney cancer survival rate is a generalization based on a huge number of cases that occurred over a long time. There's no way to predict what will happen in any individual case.

As is the case with most other diseases, the kidney cancer survival rate is measured in five year periods. In other words, a certain percentage of patients found to have kidney cancer will survive for a minimum of five years after their diagnosis.

There are a variety of categories that can be listed for kidney cancer survival rates.. The statistics in this article measure the survival rate of kidney cancer patients compared with the general population. This data comes from a study done between 1995 and 2001.

During this interval, the overall survival rate for kidney cancer patients was 64.6 percent.

The numbers were broken down further by race and gender. These were

* 64.7 percent of Caucasian males survived for at least 5 years

* The statistic was almost exactly the same for Caucasian women at 64.5 percent.

* The number for African American Men was slightly lower: 61.8 percent

* African American women had the highest survival rate, coming in at just under 66 percent

The survival rate also depends on the stage the cancer has reached by the time it's diagnosed. A higher stage assignment means the cancer has spread more and will therefore be more difficult to treat.

Approximately 53 percent of kidney cancer cases are found before cancer cells have spread beyond the kidneys.

1 case in 5 or twenty percent is diagnosed after cancer cells have spread beyond the kidneys to nearby lymph nodes, tissues or organs.

Slightly more than one in five cases - 22 percent - are diagnosed when cancer cells have reached distant tissues or organs.

Stages were unclear in the rest of the kidney cancer cases that were included in the study.

You won't be surprised to learn that the sooner the cancer was diagnosed, the longer the patient was likely to survive.

* 9 out of 10 patients who were diagnosed when cancer was confined to the kidneys survived at least five years.

* The survival rate dropped to 60 percent for those whose cancer had spread to regions near the kidneys.

* The survival rate was only 9.7 percent when cancer had spread to distant organs and tissues elsewhere in the body.

* Stage information was unclear or undiagnosed for the remaining percentage of patients.

The highest percentage of kidney cancer occurs in the United States, Canada, Australia and New Zealand, along with Northern Europe. Kidney cancer occurs least often in China, Thailand and the Philippines. Of all cancer cases diagnosed in the United States, 1 in every 33 is kidney cancer.

Two smokers develop kidney cancer for every non-smoker who gets the disease. The risk for renal pelvis cancer is even greater for smokers at 4 to 1.