Basic Clinical Facts about Cancer

Cancer is the disease which poses the biggest challenge to the medical science and until now except the cure for some types of cancer in its very first stage, cancer is still considered as medically incurable a disease. The challenge for the medical professional mainly lies in controlling the disease within the affected areas of the organ as limited as possible to curb its malignant effects as long as possible. The basic objective of the cancer treatment mainly lies in limiting the disease to spread and thereby letting the patient live with his cancer as many years as possible. Before getting into the other basic clinical facts about cancer let us see clinically what is called as cancer.

What is cancer?

In nutshell cancer is the disease of uncontrollable cell growth. When any of our body cells do not respond to the normal signals of our organism which tells the cells to grow, stop growth or even die, rather it behaves with the autonomy of persistent growth, then this cell causes disturbance to the smooth functioning of our body. This uncontrollable growth of the cell slowly become malignant and affects other cells and tissues and this malignant growth of cells which becomes a concern of life and death of the affected person is called cancer. Outside of this common definition of cancer what is most notable is that each and every case of cancer is constituted with some genetic changes, modifications and cell growth characteristics. These differences of cancer cases, even of the same organ of the body, make it so hard a disease to tackle and put to clinical research. Apart from this aspect of differentiation the common characteristics of cancer cells and basic clinical facts about cancer remains unchanged from one case to other.

Basic clinical facts about cancer cells

Here are some of the most important and basic clinical facts about cancer cells are mentioned:

1. Genetic change in any of the cells of our organ is supposed to be the primary cause of cancer.
2. Except the basic genetic change at the beginning numerous other changes are necessary for the formation and spread of a tumor.
3. The qualities and capabilities which a cancer cell must possess to proliferate include unlimited number of cell divisions, growth without and irrespective of external or other signals, avoiding cell death, capability of forming tumor in a location other than the original one, etc.

Types of treatment for Cancer

The treatment of cancer as we have already discussed still now could not take a conclusive shape and convincing cure for all types and stages of cancer still looks remote, though with the advancement of continuous research and medical technology many types of cancer are claimed to be curable if the disease is diagnosed early and subjected to immediate, proper and state- of- the-art treatment. Here we are providing a brief introduction to some of the most notable cancer therapies.

Chemotherapy: Chemotherapy is the most commonly used therapy for patients diagnosed with cancer. Chemotherapy means the use of drugs or medicines to control or cure cancerous cells.

Radiation therapy: Radiation therapy is meant to use radiation waves or high energy particles to destroy the cancerous cells of the body and along with other modes of treatment it is one of the most common types of cancer treatment procedure.

Hormonal replacement therapy: This therapy is used to stop the production of hormones that are essential for the growth of the cancerous cells.

Targeted therapy: Targeted therapy is a new procedure of cancer treatment. The objective of this treatment is to use those type of drugs which will identify and attack the cancer cells more precisely.

Immunotherapy: Human organic system has its own immune system to combat any disease or spread of disease. This therapy focuses on preparing and revitalizing this immune system of the body to fight the spread of cancerous cells from within.

This discussion regarding the basic clinical facts about cancer could have covered lot more areas about the treatment, diagnosis and research about this deadly disease but here we focused on providing the fundamental information to serve the purpose of a ready reckoner.