One of the most terrible diseases these days is cancer. And the number of people suffering from this disease is constantly growing. This disease is caused by mutation of genes that control cell division in the body. It is known that these mutations are caused by different substances (chemicals and physical agents) that are called carcinogens. These days the list of such chemicals is already big - it includes DDT, EDB, kepone, asbestos and many others.
But the saddest thing is that this list is constantly increasing - modern industry offers a great variety of new chemicals and materials and many of them can be potentially dangerous. So, such mutations lead to very fast and uncontrolled division of cells with cancer. And these cells in their turn can also invade other tissues of the body.
Cancer was known even in ancient Greece. In his works Hippocrates showed different kinds of cancer. In fact, it is he who actually gave the name to this disease. Hippocrates used two terms to describe cancer - oncos (this Greek word means swelling) and carcinos (it means crab and was used to describe malignant tumors).
Such a name probably came from the look of the actual malignant tumor - in most cases it has hard center with numerous projections coming from it - it looks pretty like a crayfish. A little later Hippocrates added suffix -oma to the name resulting in the name carcinoma. In modern medicine a special term is used to describe certain kinds of malignant tumor.
Carcinoma is only a kind of cancer - different malignant tumors that appear from epithelial cells are called carcinomas. There are several different carcinoma types but all of them are malignant. And all of the carcinoma types can invade surrounding tissues and even spread into distant sites - that is called Metastasis.
From the place of actual origin cancer cells get into lymphatic and blood vessel and then travels all over the body. So, metastases can cause cancer in other tissues and organs (the most often invaded organs are liver and brain).
Modern medicine knows five major carcinoma types. These carcinoma types are adenocarcinoma, squamous cell carcinoma, small cell carcinoma, large cell undifferentiated carcinoma and sinonasal undifferentiated carcinoma. Adenocarcinoma appears from glandular tissues - this kind of carcinoma is typical for the lung (about 30% of all lung carcinomas). Another common type in lung carcinoma is squamous cell carcinoma (about 20%).
And all the carcinoma types are characterized by staging. Each stage shows to what extent the neoplasm is spread. There are several systems used to describe staging of carcinoma (and other kinds of cancer) - you can read about all these systems in carcinoma review. This review has information on different kinds of cancer and articles about the latest achievements in treatment of this disease.
The most usual methods to treat carcinoma these days are special surgery, radiation and chemotherapy. All of them are pretty harmful but if not treated carcinoma in most cases will lead to death. And we all know there is no treatment for that.