Added: 02/08/2006 |
Carcinoma Stages Demonstrate the Spread of Cancer in the BodyCarcinoma is a sort of cancer. Carcinoma starts from epithelial cells and it is so widely spread that term carcinoma in many cases is used as synonym of cancer. In fact, the actual name "cancer" was pretty close to carcinoma at first. For the first time cancer with terms that are used till modern days was described by Hippocrates.
In his descriptions he used two different terms - "oncos" and "carcinos". The first one means swelling and Hippocrates used it to describe benign tumors of different origin. And term carcinos (which translates as crab - most of the tumors look like crabs with solid center and different projections - so he came to this term) was used by him for description of malignant tumors.
A little later he added a suffix -oma (which also means swelling in Greek). That is how the word carcinoma appeared. Unlike Hippocrates (he used this term to describe all sorts of malignant tumors) modern medicine uses "carcinoma" to describe malignant tumors of certain origin.
As with any other type of cancer there are different carcinoma stages. These carcinoma stages show the actual extent of the neoplasm spread. There are several different ways to describe that so different systems are used for carcinoma stages. The most widely used system for carcinoma stage is TNM Classification of Malignant Tumors.
This system was developed and is maintained by International Union Against Cancer (UICC). TNM letters in the name of this system show different properties of tumor. T shows the actual size of tumor, N shows the extent of spread into lymphatic nodes and M shows the extent of spread into other organs (i.e. metastasis).
But these are only basic parameters to describe carcinoma stages - there are others as well. For example, parameters that shows the grade of the cancer cells, the completeness of the operation, and invasion into veins and so on.
In most cases different types of cancer (including carcinoma) are recognized by certain symptoms like unusual tumors, bleeding or jaundice. Enlarged lymph nodes, bone pain or enlarged liver can be symptoms of metastasis (of spreading the diseases into other organs and tissues in the body). But all these symptoms can also be caused by other reasons so the actual carcinoma diagnosis is difficult at best.
Definitive carcinoma diagnosis can only be done with biopsy or surgery. These days there are also different screening procedures - they are meant for an earlier diagnosis of carcinoma and other types of cancer.
Carcinoma treatments are similar to treatments of other cancer types. In most cases surgery, chemotherapy or radiation therapy is used as treatment methods. The main goal of any kind of treatment is to remove cancer treatment with smallest possible damage to normal tissue. That can be done with surgery. But this method cannot be used in all cases of cancer.
Microscopic metastasis can travel into distant sites and such kinds of disease cannot be treated with surgery so other methods are used there. Chemotherapy and radiation are used for that but their use is limited because of the damage to normal tissue.
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