The way I understand it, a tumor is just an uncontrollable growth of cellular material. Therefore, you can assume the material quantity is increasing over time if there are more cells.
So when people go for a visit to the oncologist and get good news their tumor “shrunk”, what exactly is shrinking? Are the cells dying off? Is cellular material being purged from the body? Is the amount of cellular material the same but they are “dehydrated”, therefore taking up less space?
In: Biology
The cells die off. What’s left is either dead cells (necrosis) if you look soon after, or fibrous connective tissue often with more blood vessels than you’d figure the area would need (as the cancer was eating pretty well until the chemo!)
Different cancers and different treatments have some variation to this answer.
-pathologist (I see these areas under the microscope)
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