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Basic Cancer Information Part 1
Metastatic Cancer: Questions and Answers
Key Points
- Cancer occurs when cells become abnormal and grow without control
- The place where the cancer started is called the primary tumor or the primary site
- Metastatic cancer occurs when cancer cells spread from the place where the cancer started to other parts of the body
- When cancer spreads, the metastatic cancer has the same type of cells and the same name as the primary tumor.
- Treatment for metastatic cancer usually depends on the type of cancer as well as the size and location of the metastasis.
What is cancer?
Cancer is a group of many related diseases. All cancers begin in cells, the building blocks that make up tissues. Tissues make up the organs of the body.
Normally, cells grow and divide to form new cells, as the body needs them. When cells grow old and die, new cells take their place. Sometimes this orderly process goes wrong. New cells form when the body does not need them, and old cells do not die when they should.
The extra cells form a mass of tissue, called a growth or tumor. Tumors can be either benign (not cancerous) or malignant (cancerous). Benign tumors do not spread to other parts of the body, and they are rarely a threat to life. Malignant tumors can spread (metastasize) and may be life threatening.
What is primary cancer?
Cancer can begin in any organ or tissue of the body. The original tumor is called the primary cancer or primary tumor. It is usually named for the part of the body or the type of cell in which it begins.
What is metastasis?
Metastasis means the spread of cancer. Cancer cells can break away from a primary tumor and enter the bloodstream or lymphatic system (the tissues and organs that produce, store, and carry the cells that fight infections). That is how cancer cells spread to other parts of the body.
Cancer cells may spread to lymph nodes (rounded masses of lymphatic tissue) near the primary tumor (regional lymph nodes). This is called lymph node involvement, positive nodes, or regional disease. Cancer that spreads to other organs or to lymph nodes far from the primary tumor is called metastatic disease or distant disease.
When cancer cells spread and form a new tumor in a different organ, the new tumor is a metastatic tumor. The cancer cells in the metastatic tumor are like those in the original tumor. That means, for example, that if breast cancer spreads to the lung, the metastatic tumor in the lung is made up of abnormal breast cells (not abnormal lung cells). The disease in the lung is metastatic breast cancer (not lung cancer). Under a microscope, breast cancer cells look the same whether they are found in the breast or have spread to another part of the body.
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NCI Online- cancer.gov
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