What is Cancer?

Our body has billions of cells. When the old cells die, young cells divide to form new cells. This process continues in our body million times in a day. Now you might think that what makes the cancer situation? Cancer happens when some cells in our body shows abnormality, multiply out of control and take over from normal cells in the area.

These abnormal cells don not behave as the normal cells do. These cells grow & divide much faster as compare to normal cells and also live for longer time. Slowly, when the time passes our body creates more & more abnormal cells that begin to outnumber normal cells in the area. These cells increase out of control & form a Cancer.

The Cancer treatments are designed in such a way that it stops or slow down the process of making more & more abnormal cells. These treatments work by removing the abnormal cell, killing these cells from growing & dividing much faster.

Types of Cancer

·         Blood Cancer

·         Breast Cancer

·         Brain cancer

·         Skin cancer

·         Lung Cancer

Different groups of Cancer

·         Solid Tumours

This type of cancer includes quite common cancers such as Breast cancer, Bowel Cancer & Lung Cancer. A tumour is a lump or swelling. It does not mean that all tumours are cancers. The Benign tumours are not cancers, whereas Malignant tumours are cancers.

·         Blood Cancers

This type of cancer affects blood, bone marrow or lymphatic system. This type of cancer does not form solid tumours in the area where it starts. Most of these cancers start in bone marrow where blood cells are generated. Their cells increase within blood. These cells stop the normal blood cells from functioning properly.

Stages of Cancer

Staging of cancer is nothing but to measure the cancer that how far it has spread when it has diagnosed first. Measuring the stage of cancer helps the doctors to do the treatment accordingly. There are different systems of measuring stages of different types of cancers but generally they use these two types-

·         Numbered Cancer Stage System

This system uses stage numbers to identify how far the cancer has spread. These numbered stages are-

ü  Stages 0 (In Situ)

ü  Stage 1 (Localised Cancer)

ü  Stage 2 & 3 (Regional Spread)

ü  Stage 4 (Distant Spread)

·         TNM System

TNM system means Tumour Lymph Nodes Metastases. This helps in measuring the stage of cancer by knowing how far it has spread in the body.