General Cancer
COURSE
Understanding and Prevent Cancer
23. Carcinoma of unknown primary site
Imagine being told that you have cancer in one or several regions of your body but that the doctors cannot determine where it started. In other words, you have metastatic cancer without a corresponding primary tumor to indicate where the cancer began.
The liver, bones, lungs, lymph nodes, or other areas may be affected but in a way that indicates that the cancer spread to them from some other primary location. Investigation of the breast, prostate, lungs, gastrointestinal tract, and other organs, however, fails to reveal the tumor of origin.
24. Blood and lymph cancers
The blood and lymph cancers, also called hematologic malignancies (hema is Greek for blood), are a complicated group of diseases that are related by their common origin in cells that comprise the blood and lymph systems of the body. All blood and lymph cells are born in the bone marrow. Some remain there, some circulate in the bloodstream, and others populate the lymph tissues found throughout the body, most prominently the lymph nodes and spleen.
There are three major categories of hematologic malignancies:
1. Leukemia
25. Bone marrow stem cells give- Rise to all blood cells
When I refer to blood cells, I mean the white blood cells, red blood cells, and platelets that circulate in the bloodstream and do the work of the blood system. Their levels are routinely measured by a blood test called a CBC (complete blood count).
26. Leukemia
Leukemia refers to a group of cancers in which the malignant cells circulate in the bloodstream: the word “leukemia” derives from the joining of two Greek terms, leukos, or “white,” and -emia, meaning “of theblood.”
27. Chronic myelogenous leukemia
Chronic myelogenous leukemia is characterized by an initial slowgrowing phase, followed three to five years later by an aggressive and uniformly lethal phase (if not treated).
