Problems of nephrooncology. Proceedings from the 1st Scientific and Training Conference Nephrooncology 5–6 October 2018, Gdańsk, Poland

The treatment of patients with chronic kidney disease (CKD) and cancer is a problem for nephrologists and oncologists, because everything is interlaced: kidney disease is often a result of cancer, CKD patients are more often suffering from cancer, and treatment of cancer causes kidney damage. The diagnosis and treatment of tumors in these patients is difficult; and the results of therapy, for many reasons, differ from those obtained in the general population. Oncology is an extremely fast-growing field of medicine, there has been a huge advance in cancer treatment, and, as a result, cancer-related mortality has drastically decreased over the last decade. We want these advances to affect nephrological patients as well.Generally, nephrooncology focuses on the relationship between cancer and kidney; therefore, it involves many medical specialties taking care of patients afflicted with cancer and kidney disease. There are many areas where the cooperation is crucial for the patient’s benefit, such as: 1) diagnosis of cancer in patients with CKD (including end-stage kidney failure treated with hemodialysis, peritoneal dialysis, and kidney transplantation), 2) complexity of cancer treatment in such patients, 3) possibility of the application of novel molecularly targeted agents in CKD patients, 4) acute kidney injury and other side effects of anticancer therapy, 5) paraneoplastic renal manifestations, 6) native and transplanted kidney cancer and its treatment, 7) kidney transplantation in patients with a history of different cancers, and 8) diagnosis and treatment of rare systemic diseases affecting the kidneys, such as tuberous sclerosis complex. The aim of such cooperation is the improvement of patient survival and their quality of life, as well as obtaining, in nephrological patients, the results of treatment similar to those in the general population.These are only examples, and a multidisciplinary cooperation is needed also in numerous other fields. In this special issue, we present some of the problems related to nephrooncology.