1. What is a tumor?
A tumor is normal cells which have suffered DNA damage. This damage allows them to grow and replicate without control.
2. What are the different types of tumors?
There are 2 types: benign and malignant. For the most part, benign tumors cause little problems except if they become large and or when they grow in sensitive areas (eg. tumors that occur in the brain). Benign tumors stay in the area they started but do not spread to distant places.
Malignant tumors, however, continue to grow uncontrollably and have the potential to spread all over the body through the blood vessels, lymphatics and nerves. All the cells in the body have the ability to reproduce by dividing into make 2 daughter cells. In general, normal cells have a finite lifespan.
When cells become cancerous, they have lost the ability to behave like normal cells. They don’t know when to stop growing so they continue to grow over their neighbors until they become a mass that can be felt or seen on imaging. In addition, they lose the tendency to stick to their neighbors, so they tend to travel through the methods as described above.
3. Why are different types of cancer broken down into “Stages?”
The staging system is organized to let the cancer professionals determine the chances that we will be able to control the cancer. This system conveys to us the average probability of survival of the patient, and also helps us describe the disease to each other. That being said, each patient and each cancer is different, so we can’t always predict survival for a specific individual patient.
4. What are the 4 Stages of Breast Cancer?
- Stage 0: Not considered cancer but considered precancerous.
- Stage I: Usually means the malignant tumor is relatively small and is confined to the place of origin and example would be a tumor in the breast that has not spread outside the breast. That is, it has not yet spread to the lymph nodes.
- Stage II: The tumor is still small and my have spread to one or more lymph nodes in the local area.
- Stage III: The disease is more advanced in that either the tumor is large or there are more lymph nodes involve with tumor.
- Stage IV: The disease has spread to other organs eg. lung cancer that has spread to the bones, liver, or brain. It is still the same lung cancer but the cancerous cells have found a place to set up shop in these organs.
Your doctor may also give you a “Tumor Stage Base” on the TNM system. This is a description of the Tumor, Nodes, Metastasis,which helps differentiate the prognosis for patients sharing the same stage level but with different situations. For example, there may be two patients with Stage 2 disease but one has a big tumor but no nodes. The other may have a really small tumor but multiple lymph nodes affected by the cancer. The unfortunate truth is that the second patient may have the worse prognosis based on the fact that the tumor has spread to the nodes.
5. What is metastases?
This term means that the cancer has spread to another area of the body away from the site of origin. The tumor cells have now begun to live in an area to which it does not belong, for example, a lung cancer that has spread to the liver. The lung cancer cells have now formed a mass in the liver among liver cells.
6. Why does someone develop cancer?
For most cancer types, cancer professionals do not know why someone develops a cancerous tumors. We think that there is a genetic component to the development of cancers. Hereditary cancers are still relatively rare and consist of less then 10% of all cancers. This is a area of ongoing research. We know that if one identical twin develops cancer, it increases the chances that the other twin will develop the same cancer.
Smoking, sunbathing, sexual habits and obesity are all lifestyle choices that may affect the development of cancer in the future. For instance, the Surgeon General informed us in the early 1960’s that smoking causes lung cancers. Now we know that smoking increases one’s risks of developing many types of cancers including esophagus, bladder, head and neck, cervix and other cancers. There are also people who smoke for a long time who never develop any cancers. On the flip side are those people how never smoked yet they were killed by lung cancer.
There are also some viruses that are implicated in cancer formation. Certain subtypes of the Human Papilloma Virus (HPV) is one that has been known to cause cancers of the head and neck and cervix. This virus can be transmitted to others by sexual activity. Adolescent boys and girls are now being vaccinated against this virus in an effort to reduce deaths. The virus causes damage to the DNA of the cells they invade contributing to the formation of cancer. There are other viruses like Hepatitis that can cause liver cancer. Ebstein Barr virus can cause Burkitt’s Lymphoma.
Skin cancer is caused by excessive exposure to the damaging effects of UV radiation caused by the sun . The more sun burns one experiences as a child increases the risk. Sun blocking is encouraged to avoid sun burns. Basal and squamous cell cancers of the skin are the the most common type of cancer in the US. They are usually not lethal. Dark skin can give some protection but people of African descent can also develop skin cancer, though it is not as common. Those with pale skin, light eyes, and lots of freckles have the highest risk of developing skin cancers. One can protect oneself by applying generous amounts of skin screen daily.
It is also important to remember that cancer does not respect gender. Traditionally associated with women, breast cancer can also develop in men because they too have some breast tissue, just not as much.
The most common risk is age. The longer we live the more likely it is that one might develop cancer. Research shows a majority of cancer cases are initially diagnosed in a person’s mid to late 40’s.
(If you need more information or have a question you would like to have answered about cancer, please send your request to me via email at isidoraarzumd@gmail.com. Or call 713-501-8905
