cancer notes. what is cancer? cancer develops when cells in the body begin to grow out of control

Cancer Notes

What is cancer?• Cancer develops when cells in the body

begin to grow out of control.

Cancer

• Normal body cells grow, divide, and die in an orderly fashion.

Cancer

• Because cancer cells continue to grow and divide, they are different from normal cells.

• Instead of dying, they outlive normal cells and continue to form new abnormal cells.

• The mass of cells is called a

. • The study of tumors is called

.

tumor

oncology

Cancer

• Cancer cells can travel to other parts of the body where they begin to grow and replace normal tissue.

• is when cancer cells get into the bloodstream or lymph system and spread to different parts of the body.

Metastasis

Cancer

• The name of a cancer is given by the location it starts.

• If a person has cancer in their lungs then it is called

• If that cancer spreads to another part of the body, it is still called lung cancer.

“lung cancer”.

Cancer

• Cancer cells develop because of damage to

• Usually, this damage is repaired. This is not the case with cancer cells.

• DNA regulates the cell cycle so when it is damaged, the cycle becomes

DNA

unstable.

Cancer

• Many times our DNA can be damaged by our environment or things we do to our bodies.

Smoking, radiation exposure, too much sun

Cancer

• We can also be genetically predisposed to a cancer if we inherit a certain gene from our parents

• have been genetically linked

• 5% of cancers

Breast, ovarian and colon cancer

Cancer

• Cancer usually forms a tumor.

• tumors are non-cancerous and they do not spread.

• tumors are cancerous and they do spread.

Benign

Malignant

Cancer

• Different types of cancer behave very differently.

• Lung cancer and breast cancer grow at different rates and respond to different treatments.

• Treatments vary from surgery, radiation, chemotherapy, immunotherapy, antiangiogenesis, hyperthermia, etc.

Types of Cancer

• develop in soft tissues like muscle, and in bone and cartilage

• develop in the blood cells

• develop in the lymphatic system

• develop in the bodies organs

• There are a few others that don’t fit any of these categories

Sarcomas

Leukemias

Lymphomas

Carcinomas

Statistics

• Cancer is the 2nd leading cause of death in the United States (

is #1).

• of all men and of all women in the U.S. will develop cancer in their lifetime.

heart disease

Half

one third

Statistics

• About of all cancers are diagnosed in persons 55 and older

• About new cases of cancer will be diagnosed this year (60,000 in Illinois).

• Add to that number, 1 million cases of skin cancer.

• About people will die each day of cancer in this country ( each yr.)

77%

1.5 million

1,500566,000