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right kidney removed, anemia, swollen right testicle
by Paud, Dec 18, 2007 07:10AM
Hi approx. 9 months ago my father in law (63 years old) had his right kidney removed due to a tumour. He had no further treatment as the cancer had not spread. Since then he has felt terrible, he has no energy at all and is short of breath, his muscles are waisting. He has had further scans and no cancer has been found. recently he found out he was anemic and has been on iron tablets for 3 to 4 weeks now but with no improvement, if anything he continues to dis-improve. Since his operation he has had swelling in his right testicle which is not going away. Do you have any idea what could be wrong, he is wasting away in front of our eyes and nobody has an answer. I thougt it might be nut cracker syndrome however this affects the left testicle only?. the last CT scan showed a swelling of the renal vein on the left kidney and soon he will visit another doctor in relation to this, he is going for an MRI this week. He had his heart checked and it was perfect, his BUN is between 10 and 12 and his blood pressure has remained normal. We are now desperate as we can't get any answers, any help is welcome.
Post Comment
His anemia may be due to a decrease in erythropoeitin. This is a hormone produced by the kidney. It stimulates the bone marrow to produce more red blood cells. Removing one of his kidneys may have resulted in decreased erythropoeitin secretion, and consequently low levels of red cells. So aside from the iron supplements, he probably needs intermittent injections of erythropoeitin. Injections of this hormone may also be able to improve his wasting and fatigue.
Removing his right kidney would also mean that the blood vessels coursing through it would have been cut or ligated during the operation. This prevents blood and fluids from the lower parts of the body (like the testicle) from draining through their usual route, thus causing the swelling. Unfortunately, there isn't a permanent solution to this problem short of a repeat surgery to repair blood vessels(and even if this is done, there's no guarantee that there's going to be an improvement in circulation).
Lastly, what I would like to know is the functional status of his remaining kidney. If his other kidney already has a problem before the surgery, removing one could place too much burden on the remaining kidney. This could push it to further deteriorate in function. The BUN is not the measure of renal function. I need to know his serum creatinine as well as his age to be able to calculate this. Maybe you can provide that information in another post.
I hope the above explanations help.