What is Cancer?
Types of cancer
- Carcinomas: It is a common type of cancer that starts in the skin or the tissue includes the surface of internal organs and glands. It basically forms solid tumors. Examples of carcinomas are breast cancer, lung cancer, and colorectal cancer.
- Sarcomas: It begins in the tissues that bear and connect the body. It can develop in fat, muscles, nerves, tendons, joints, blood vessels, lymph vessels, cartilage, or bone.
- Leukemia: It is a cancer of the blood and begins when healthy blood cells change and expand uncontrollably. The four major types of leukemia are acute lymphocytic leukemia, chronic lymphocytic leukemia, acute myeloid leukemia, and chronic myeloid leukemia.
- Lymphomas: It is cancer that starts in the lymphatic system which is a network of vessels and glands that help fight infection. Hodgkin lymphoma and non-Hodgkin lymphoma are the two main types of lymphomas.
- Blastoma: This type of cancer is common in children than in older adults. It is derived from immature predecessor cells or embryonic tissue.
All these types of cancer can be cured in the top cancer hospital in India.
Causes of Cancer
Cancer is originated by changes (mutations) to the DNA within cells. The DNA inside a cell is packaged into a huge number of individual genes, each of which includes a set of instructions that allow the cell what functions to perform, how to grow and divide. Any error in the instructions can cause the cell to stop its normal function and may enable a cell to become cancerous.
A gene mutation can mandate a healthy cell to:
- Enable rapid growth: A gene mutation can tell a cell to grow and divide more rapidly. This produces various new cells that all have the same mutation.
- Fail to cease uncontrolled cell growth: Normal cells know when to halt developing. It allows having the exact number of every type of cell. Cancer cells lose the controls for instructing them when to stop growing. A mutation in a tumor suppressor gene enables cancer cells to continue developing and multiplying.
- Making mistakes at the time of repairing DNA errors: DNA repair genes look for errors in a cell’s DNA and make corrections. A mutation in a DNA repair gene may mean that other errors are not corrected which leads cells to become cancerous.
Symptoms of Cancer
The signs and symptoms of cancer vary and depend on what part of the body is affected. Some general signs and symptoms associated with cancer but not certain to cancer are as follows:
- Fatigue
- Persistent cough or trouble breathing
- Difficulty swallowing
- Weight changes, including unintended loss or gain
- Lump or area of thickening that can be felt under the skin
- Hoarseness
- Persistent, unexplained muscle or joint pain
- Persistent, unexplained fevers or night sweats
- Unexplained bleeding or bruising
- Skin changes like yellowing, darkening or redness of the skin, sores that do not heal, or changes to existing moles
Stages of Cancer
Following are typically four stages of cancer:
- Stage 0: This stage indicates that cancer in situ which means “in place.” Stage 0 cancers are placed in the area where they began and have not spread to surrounding tissues. This stage is highly curable by detaching the entire tumor with surgery.
- Stage I: This stage is small cancer or tumor which is not developed deeply into nearby tissues. It is also not spread to the lymph nodes or other parts of the body. It is often called early-stage cancer.
- Stage II and Stage III: These two stages indicate the large size of cancer or tumors and have grown deep into the surrounding tissue. They may also grow to lymph nodes but not to other parts of the body.
- Stage IV: This stage of cancer indicates that cancer has grown to other organs or parts of the body. It may also be known as advanced or metastatic cancer.
Cancer Treatment Options
There are various options available for cancer treatment in India. These treatments depend on location in the body, stage, type, and extent of cancer. The best cancer hospital in India is Medanta- The Medicity. The most beneficial therapies are as follows:
- Surgery: It is done to remove the tumor if it is limited to its origin site.
- Chemotherapy: Chemotherapy utilizes strong drugs to kill cancer cells. These drugs assist in preventing the cancer cells by stopping multiplication or growth at a specific point in their life cycles. It is the best cancer treatment in India.
- Radiation therapy: Radiation therapy uses ionizing radiation for the treatment of cancer. It is performed to makes it impossible for the cancer cells to grow further.
- Hormone therapy: Few types of cancer are fueled by the body’s hormones. This therapy is used in breast cancer and prostate cancer.
- Bone marrow transplant: It is also known as a stem cell transplant. It is the material inside your bones that makes blood cells from blood stem cells. A bone marrow transplant can use your own bone marrow from a donor.
- Immunotherapy: It is also known as biological therapy that utilizes the immune system of the body to fight cancer. It also decreases the side effects that developed because of some other cancer treatments.
Cancer Recurrence
When cancer returns, it’s considered a recurrence. A cancer recurrence happens because some cells from cancer remained in spite of the best efforts to rid of cancer. The cancer cells could be in the same place where cancer first originated or they could be in other parts of the body. These cancer cells may be drowsing for a period of time but they continued to multiply and result in the recurrence of cancer.
Cancer Treatment in India
Cancer Treatment in India is one of the great in the world. The best cancer hospital in India provides treatment, technology, and hospitality at par with developed countries anywhere in the world. Reasonable treatments and the various options of hospitals, trained doctors, medical staff and state-of-the-art technology have made India one of the best places to seek cancer treatment. The leading cancer hospital in Bangalore is Fortis Cancer Institute
FAQ
Cancer not only causes physical life-threatening disease status but also leads to a mental and financial crisis in a patient’s life.
Of course not, this was the earlier case but now the life expectancy is good with the medical advancements.
Metastasis means that cancer or tumor cells have spread to other parts of the body and invading healthy tissue there, the results of metastasis may be serious life-threatening.
Cancer is staged according to the Tumor, Node, Metastasis (TNM) System of staging, i.e extent of the tumor (T), the extent of spread to lymph nodes (N), and presence of distant metastasis (M).
Anybody can develop cancer but the risk of getting it rises with age. Many reported cases are in middle-aged adults or older.
- Changes in lifestyle such as yoga, massage, Hypnosis
- By reducing obesity
- By avoiding tobacco usage
The goal of the treatment is to kill as many cancerous cells and decrease the damage to normal cells.
The main treatment for cancer is:
- Surgery: In this, cancer is directly removed
- Chemotherapy: In this, drugs are used to kill cancer cells
- Radiation therapy: In this therapy, X-rays are utilized to kill cancer cells.
Chemotherapy drugs are given in various ways such as:
- Chemotherapy infusions
- Chemotherapy pills
- Chemotherapy shots
- Chemotherapy creams
- Chemotherapy drugs used for the treatment of one area of the body. For instance, chemotherapy drugs can be given directly in the abdomen which is called intraperitoneal chemotherapy