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Metastatic Tumours
Bilateral adrenal masses: phaeochromocytoma or melanoma? Feb 28, 2006
Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine Lam KY, Lo CY. Metastatic tumours of the adrenal glands: a 30-year experience in a teaching hospital. Clin Endocrinol (Oxf) 2002;56:95 -101[CrossRef][Medline]. ...
Brain and Spinal Cord Tumours Nov 8, 2005
Health24.com, The majority of primary brain tumours and metastatic tumours respond poorly to all forms of treatment and patients should carefully weigh up the risks of these ...
Researchers find drug that blocks spread of lung cancer in mice -- Sep 1, 2005
The researchers injected human lung tumour cells into the tails of mice and found that GRN163L blocked the development of metastatic tumours over several months ... / EiTB,
Canadian research teams aim to find ways to block breast cancer's ... -- Aug 16, 2005
...sure," he said. Dedhar is keen to find ways to develop drugs that specifically target secondary or metastatic tumours. Current cancer ... / Canada.com,
Scientists find gene mutation that drives melanoma -- Jul 6, 2005
About 10 percent of primary tumours and 21 percent of metastatic tumours -- those that had spread beyond the original site -- had up to 13 extra copies of the ... / Reuters AlertNet,
Metastasis (Greek: change of the state) is the spread of cancer from its primary site to other places in the body. Localized spread to lymph nodes is not normally counted as metastasis, although this is a sign of poor prognosis.
Cancer cells can break away from a primary tumor, penetrate into lymphatic and blood vessels, circulate through the bloodstream, and grow in a distant focus (metastasize) in normal tissues elsewhere in the body.
Tumors are classified as either benign or malignant. Malignant tumors can spread by invasion and metastasis while benign tumors cannot (and only grow locally). By definition, the term "cancer" applies only to malignant tumors. Still, some tumors with benign histology can behave as malignant tumors, for example in brain tumors, where treatment has to be as aggressive as with malignant disease.
Patients diagnosed with cancer want to know whether their disease is local or has spread to other locations. It is the ability to spread to other tissues and organs that makes cancer a potentially life-threatening disease, so there is great interest in understanding what makes metastasis possible for a cancerous tumor.
Metastatic tumors are very common in late stage of the disease. The spread of metastases may occur via the blood or the lymphatics. Usually sarcomas spread by the hematogenous route, while carcinomas spread by the lymphatic route. The most common places for the metastases to occur are the adrenals, liver, brain and the bones. There is also a propensity for certain tumors to seed in particular organs. For example, prostate cancer usually metastasizes to the bones. Similarly, colon cancer has a tendency to metastasize to the liver. Stomach cancer often metastasizes to the ovary in women, where it forms the Krukenberg tumor.
When cancer cells spread to form a new tumor, it is called a secondary, or metastatic tumor, and its cells are like those in the original tumor. This means, for example, that if breast cancer spreads (metastasizes) to the lung, the secondary tumor is made up of abnormal breast cells (not abnormal lung cells). The disease in the lung is metastatic breast cancer (not lung cancer).
Cancer cells may spread to lymph nodes (regional lymph nodes) near the primary tumor. This is called nodal involvement, positive nodes, or regional disease. Cancer cells can also spread to other parts of the body, distant from the primary tumor. Doctors use the term metastatic disease or distant disease to describe cancer that spreads to other organs or to lymph nodes other than those near the primary tumor.
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