Like Mother, Like Daughter: Fighting Kidney Cancer With Expert Care

There are many mother-daughter experiences that can generate meaningful moments, happy memories and smiles. Renal cancer is not one of them.

That was the disheartening diagnosis Beth Berliant received last fall, about two years after her mom, Harriet Cooperman, was treated for a kidney tumor.

Fortunately, they also shared something else: their surgeon, urologic specialist Raymond Leveillee, M.D., who is based at Bethesda Hospital.

“When my daughter was having problems, I had no doubt that that's where she was going to go,” Ms. Cooperman says. “Of course I recommended him for my daughter, but I'd recommend him for anyone that needed any kind of kidney treatment.”

(Watch Now: There are many mother-daughter experiences that can generate meaningful moments, happy memories and smiles. Renal cancer is not one of them. See how Beth Berliant and her mother are now both cancer-free, pain-free and enjoying life, thanks to urologic specialist Raymond Leveillee, M.D. at Bethesda Hospital. Video by Plum Productions.)

The Diagnosis

Ms. Berliant, who works at a middle school in Wellington, hadn’t expected to learn she had cancer last year. It was finally summer and she was looking forward to some upcoming travel on her calendar. But then, one night in late June, she was awakened by such intense pain it was frightening. She immediately headed to the emergency department at Bethesda Hospital.

A CT scan showed she had what is known as a staghorn kidney stone, which is too large to pass and can cause dangerous complications. That explained the pain. But the CT scan also revealed something else — the outline of something that looked suspiciously like a mass.

A consultation with a urologist confirmed that the situation had the potential to be high-risk. Ms. Berliant was advised to seek care with Dr. Leveillee, who specializes in complex renal conditions. She recognized his name; he had done the successful surgery to remove part of her mother’s kidney because of a cancerous tumor.

“When I told my mother that the urologist recommended Dr. Leveillee, she went on and on and on about him. She really, really loved him,” Ms. Berliant says.

Raymond Leveillee, M.D., urologic specialist with Bethesda Hospital, part of Baptist Health

The Assessment

Most people have two kidneys about the size of a fist on either side of the spine, at the bottom of the rib cage. These life-sustaining organs help filter the blood, remove waste through urine, and contribute to the body’s fluid balance, red blood cell production and blood pressure control.

According to the American Cancer Society, about 82,000 new cases of kidney cancer will be diagnosed in 2024, and about 14,000 people will die. When the cancer is localized, surgery is usually the main treatment, with a goal of removing the cancer while preserving as normal a kidney function as possible.

Most of the time, kidney cancer risk is not passed down from parent to child. Hereditary kidney cancer accounts for only 5‒8 percent of all kidney cancers, according to the National Institutes of Health. Although they faced the same diagnosis, Ms. Berliant and her mom’s kidney cancer appear unrelated.

“The pathologies were different,” Dr. Leveillee says. “It’s kind of interesting that both mother and daughter came for same condition, but different.”

Making a Plan

Alarmed at another cancer diagnosis in the family, Ms. Berliant, who is married 20 years and has two sons in high school, initially wanted the most radical surgery to get rid of the cancer and achieve peace of mind. Dr. Leveillee, who ordered more detailed imaging, was able to outline a more conservative option to save her kidney.

Through innovative web-based technology that uses artificial intelligence to generate a 3D model from CT and MRI scans, Dr. Leveillee was able to show Ms. Berliant what was going on inside her and how he planned to address it.

The model of her kidney, which could be viewed on a phone as well as a monitor, “allowed her to make an informed decision based on the science and the anatomy, and not a panic decision of ‘I want this thing gone,’” Dr. Leveillee says. “We don't want to throw away a good kidney just because it has a stone or a lump in it.”

Dr. Leveillee notes that Bethesda has the surgical imaging software, which he calls “a game changer,” thanks to the generosity of donors who make it possible for the hospital to embrace new technology. The platform allows him to carefully visualize the situation at hand, map a strategy and better prepare the surgical team, he says.

“The surgeon can look at the model and manipulate it and interpret planes of dissection, things to cut out or things to avoid much better because we have a 3D view,” Dr. Leveillee explains. “It really allows one to learn the anatomy of that particular patient. I can look at it from the front, from the bottom, from the side.”

The Happy Ending

As he had with her mother, Dr. Leveillee performed a partial nephrectomy on Ms. Berliant, in which only a section of the kidney is removed. The procedure at Bethesda Hospital was laparoscopic, using four small incisions in her abdomen to access and remove the tumor with robotic technology.

“That old-fashioned idea of just-take-everything-out-of-me is kind of going by the wayside. We see tumors much earlier nowadays — smaller, more contained tumors that can be addressed conservatively,” Dr. Leveillee says. “Radical surgery to remove the entire organ is not the gold standard anymore for kidney cancer. Partial nephrectomy or removal of just the tumor is the new gold standard.”

A few weeks later, in an outpatient procedure, Dr. Leveillee inserted a stent to support Ms. Berliant’s kidney until he could go in and deal with the staghorn stone once she recovered. A few months later, with catheter-based surgery through her back, he used a laser to break up the stone and extract the pieces.

Both Ms. Berliant and her mother are now cancer-free, pain-free, and enjoying life. They describe Dr. Leveillee as their hero. He’s glad they were pleased with his care, but he notes that the staff at Bethesda is a team, and everyone plays an important role.

“I don't work in a silo,” Dr. Leveillee says. “I've got my physician assistants, my office manager, the medical assistants — they're all part of this. And when you get into the hospital, there are so many people there who don't get any recognition but who make things work — the surgery coordinator who gets the authorizations, the people who do the scheduling, so many people behind the scenes. All of those people are unsung heroes. If I look good, it's because of them.”

The technology used to generate the 3D model for Ms. Berliant’s procedure was made possible through a generous donation to Baptist Health Foundation, Dr. Leveillee notes, and it is expected to be implemented at other Baptist Health locations. Thanks to donor generosity, Baptist Health is supporting its patients and community by revolutionizing patient care, pursuing a new era in research and clinical trials, recruiting the best minds in medicine and creating a globally recognized center for innovation.