If you’re diagnosed with breast cancer is the rest of you safe? Or is it more like you have cancer in your body and it started in the breast?
In: Biology
It’s a cancer made of breast tissue. There are specific cells and tissue designed for milk production in the breast (in both men and women) and when those cells become cancerous, that is breast cancer.
When cancer is malignant, that is what makes it truly dangerous. The tumor breaks a small piece off and gets lodged somewhere else in the body and begins forming a new tumor. It’s still breast tissue, but now it’s growing somewhere else.
Tumors that are insular and can’t migrate to different parts of the body are benign and generally not cancerous. Tumors that can potentially migrate to different parts (metastasize)are called malignant and are cancerous. If you have early breast cancer, you have cancerous cells that originated in your breasts but are still only in that part of the body. If the cancer is late stage, that typically means the breast cancer has metastasized and is now present in different parts of the body- not just the breast. So it is possible to find breast cancer cells all over the body, but only if the original tumor metastasized
Hi, Anatomical Pathology doctor here.
“Cancer” is an umbrella term for any disease where cells lose control of their ability to regulate how they grow, resulting in exaggerated growth and, eventually for a lot of cancers, spread to other tissues in the body where they do not belong.
Imagine an invasive species that is introduced to an ecosystem where it absolutely thrives and outcompetes all other organisms in that ecosystem and ends up destroying them. This is what cancer can be compared to when it has spread.
Now, let’s think about cancer that begins in the breast. Think of an animal that has lots of different varieties – perhaps a dog for example. There are many breeds of dog, some of which are intrinsically aggressive and energetic (let’s say a particularly uppity chihuahua), and others which are slow and plodding (let’s say a Newfoundland). “Breast cancer” can be thought of in a similar way. There any many “breeds” of breast cancer – all of which have their intrinsic biological behaviour, some of which are very aggressive and destructive like our friend the psycho chihuahua, and others that are very slow to spread like our big dumb Newfoundland.
This is the same analogy for cancers that begin in tissues all across the body. There are a biblical amount of different varieties that act differently, but all share the ability to invade and destroy surrounding or distant tissue, which (VERY simplified) ultimately leads to death.
Most cancer are at risk to spread. Some more than other. Their origin often means they have some differences that are relevant to know for treatment.
My aunt started with breast cancer that then reach the lymph nodes and lungs, then brain. She died. :/
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