The incidence of renal cell carcinoma (RCC) is gradually
increasing, with 61,560 new cases and 14,080 deaths reported in
2015.1 The common presenting symptoms of RCC are hematuria,
flank pain and flank mass.2 The standard of care for the stage IeIII
RCC is nephrectomy,2 either open or laparoscopic. RCC was traditionally
considered to be resistant to conventional radiation therapy
with doses up to 6 Gy having little effect on tumor cell viability.3
While early studies in the 70s and 80s failed to show a significant
clinical benefit of a conventional post-operative radiation therapy,4
more recent trials that used a high dose image-guided adjuvant RT
demonstrated a significant reduction of loco-regional failure.5 Stereotactic
radiotherapy ablation showed some promise in patients
with unresectable renal cancer, but more studies are needed to
further evaluate this approach in patients with inoperable RCC.5
Here, we report a case of unresectable renal mass with radiographic
features of the renal cell carcinoma that was treated with
ionizing radiation.