Does the adrenal gland need to be removed with kidney cancer surgery?

No: The adrenal gland is a small but very important organ that sits on top of each kidney. During kidney cancer surgery, it has been traditionally removed as part of the surgery to remove the kidney cancer. However, there is a lot of recent data to show that it does not need to be removed with the kidney as long as certain criteria are met such as size of the kidney tumor, location of tumor, etc.

No, but depends: In the older days, it was taught to remove adrenals with kidneys for the treatment of rcc. A lot has change and the adrenal does not need to be removed unless there is or suspected infiltration of an upper pole tumor into the adrenal gland. Then again that would also increase the stage if indeed there is cancer in the ipsilateral adrenal gland.