How do cancer cells spread??!
Question: i always here of someone that has cancer of some body part or other and then it spreads to another part, but how does it spread?
Answers: i always here of someone that has cancer of some body part or other and then it spreads to another part, but how does it spread?
Tumour cells invade the lymphatic system and so spread from one part of the body to another. There are some trends.... i.e bowel timours often cause liver spread and prostate can spread into bone.
What is just as interesting is how they grow....Strange comparison but here goes....
Beningn (non life threatening) tumours are encapsulated and they grow in a similar way to how a citrus fruit would grow.... i.e - with a membrane capsule around it like the peel of an orange, the tumour stays within the capsule and can usually be removed safely.
Malignant (life threatening) tuours will grow similarly to creeping ivy whereby it attaches to nearby structures and wraps around organs or "tubes and pipes" like bowel, bile ducts and ureters. This can be difficult to treat and often needs surgical removal of any visible signs of tumour and then follow up treatment with chemo/radio therapy. The tumour may "strangulate" abdominal organs causing pain and a variety of other potential symptoms depending on location.
THROUGH THE BLOOD COS D WHITE BLOOD CELLS CANT DEFEND DEMSELFS COS THEIR TOO WEAK.
often through the lymphatic system
The cancer cells can break away from the starting point (usually a tumour) and spread around the body often into neighbouring tissue or through the lymphatic system.
cancer cells have a unique proporties in which they can divide in uncontrolable manner and some can detach and travel throgh blood or lymphatic system and effect other cells ,,,,,,
Cancer spreads to another part of your body by cells. When one cell has a malfunction it spreads to other cells and when in gets in to your body it can go anywhere because if your cells and blood. so you could have skin cancer and also get colon cancer or heart cancer. That is why people say cancer can spread to other parts of your body.
How does a cancer spread?
In order to spread, some cells from the primary cancer must break away, travel to another part of the body and start growing there. Cancer cells do not stick together as well as normal cells. They also may produce substances that stimulate them to move. But how do cancer cells travel through the body?
There are three main ways a cancer spreads
Local spread
Through the blood circulation
Through the lymphatic system
Local spread
The cancer grows directly into nearby body tissues. There is more about this in the page on how cancers grow.
Spread through the blood stream
In order to spread, the cancer cell must first become detached from the primary tumour. It must then burrow through the wall of a blood vessel to get into the blood stream.
When it is in the blood stream, it will be swept along by the circulating blood until it gets stuck somewhere, usually in a very small blood vessel called a capillary.
Then it must burrow through the wall of the capillary and into the tissue of the organ it finds itself in. There it must start to multiply to grow a new tumour.
As you can see, this is a complicated journey. Most cancer cells do not survive it. Probably, out of many thousands of cancer cells that reach the circulation only one will survive to form a secondary cancer or metastasis.
Some are probably killed off by the white blood cells.
Others may die because they are battered around by the fast flowing blood. Some researchers believe that, although cancer cells are capable of surviving on their own, they cannot do this for long. They need to re-attach quite quickly in order to live.
Cancer cells in the circulation may try to stick to platelets to form clumps to provide themselves with some protection. This may also help them to be filtered out in the next capillary network they come across and move into the tissues to start a secondary tumour.
Spread through the lymphatic system
The way a cancer spreads through the lymphatic system is very similar to the way it spreads through the blood stream. The cancer cell must become detached from the primary tumour. Then it will travel along with the circulating lymph until it gets stuck in the small channels inside a lymph node and begins to grow a secondary cancer.
Why cancers spread where they do
Whether it is in the blood or the lymph, the spreading cancer cell stops at the first place it gets stuck. In the blood stream, this is often the first capillary network it comes across. The blood flow from most body organs goes next through the capillaries in the lungs. So not surprisingly, the lungs are a very common site of cancer spread.
The blood from the organs of the digestive system goes through the capillaries of the liver before going back to the heart and then to the lungs. So it is common for digestive system cancers to spread to the liver. In fact, the liver is the second commonest site of cancer spread.
Some cancers show unexpected patterns of spread. For example prostate cancer often spreads to the bones. Scientists are still investigating why this happens.
During cancer surgery, it is routine for the surgeon to remove the main lymph nodes that drain the organ where the cancer is. For example, the surgeon operating to remove a breast cancer will remove at least some of the lymph nodes from under the arm. These are the first lymph nodes through which lymph draining from the breast flows. The surgeon does this because the first lymph nodes draining an organ are the most likely ones to contain cancer cells.
It's a living organism that feed off of healthy cells, so it "grows" or "spreads" to other areas....Terrible, terrible disease.
http://www.cancerbackup.org.uk/Home
you will get all your answers here
They spread by entering the lymphatic or blood circulation.