Pancreatic cancer is hard to find early. The pancreas is deep inside the body, so early tumors can't be seen or felt by health care providers during routine physical exams. People usually have no symptoms until the cancer has become very large or has already spread to other organs.
Lung cancer, ovarian cancer, colorectal and cervical cancers, as well as breast cancer, can all go unnoticed by patients until they are very advanced, stage 3 or stage 4 tumors. These tumors are often defined as “late stage” cancers.
Some cancers can be present for months or years before they're detected. Some commonly undetected cancers are slow-growing conditions, which gives doctors a better chance at successful treatment. Others are more aggressive and can be more challenging to treat.
Lung and bronchus cancer is responsible for the most deaths with 130,180 people expected to die from this disease. That is nearly three times the 52,580 deaths due to colorectal cancer, which is the second most common cause of cancer death. Pancreatic cancer is the third deadliest cancer, causing 49,830 deaths.
Pancreatic Cancer: The Silent Killer.
Cancer survival rates by cancer type
The cancers with the lowest five-year survival estimates are mesothelioma (7.2%), pancreatic cancer (7.3%) and brain cancer (12.8%). The highest five-year survival estimates are seen in patients with testicular cancer (97%), melanoma of skin (92.3%) and prostate cancer (88%).
Some cancers are difficult to treat and have high rates of recurrence. Glioblastoma, for example, recurs in nearly all patients, despite treatment. The rate of recurrence among patients with ovarian cancer is also high at 85%.
A number of cancers can metastasize to the spine, including breast cancer, testicular cancer, colon cancer and lung cancer. In fact, approximately 25% of people with lung cancer report back pain as a symptom.
Unfortunately, some cancers, such as brain cancer and ovarian cancer, remain difficult to detect until the end stages.
Why can't the primary cancer be found? There could be several reasons that the primary cancer cannot be found: the secondary cancer has grown and spread quickly, but the primary cancer is still too small to be seen on scans. your immune system has destroyed the primary cancer, but not the secondary cancer.
Aside from leukemia, most cancers cannot be detected in routine blood work, such as a CBC test. However, specific blood tests are designed to identify tumor markers, which are chemicals and proteins that may be found in the blood in higher quantities than normal when cancer is present.
1 In some cases, there are no symptoms at all, so it's possible to have stage 4 cancer and not know it. Most of the time, a cancer that reaches stage 4 affects not only the part of the body where it originated but the areas where it has spread to as well.
Back pain red flags – Night Pain
Back pain that worsens at night or while you're sleeping might indicate something more severe like an infection or cancer. This is especially true if you also have other symptoms in addition to your back discomfort when you sleep or relax.
When back pain is caused by a cancerous spinal tumor, it typically: Starts gradually and worsens over time. Does not improve with rest and may intensify at night. Flares up as a sharp or shock-like pain in the upper or lower back, which may also go into the legs, chest, or elsewhere in the body.
Middle back pain can have several causes, including impact trauma, arthritis, herniated discs, muscle strains, scoliosis, and many more. The term 'middle back' often refers to the thoracic spine — the region of the back between the rib cage and the base of the neck.
Does cancer always come back? While cancer doesn't always return, recurrence is common for some hard-to-treat forms of cancer. These recurrences usually follow certain patterns that patients may be aware of in order to catch things as early as possible. There's no way to guarantee that cancer won't return.
Curable Cancers: Prostate, Thyroid, Testicular, Melanoma, Breast.