Tumour

From Ganfyd

Latin for swelling. It is used archaically as one of the cardinal descriptive features of acute inflammation.

It is often used to mean neoplasm, which refers to a new growth of cells that persists even after the initial stimulus for growth has been removed.

Tumours can be either benign or malignant. Although malignant tumours are often regarded as the worse of the two types, the division is not clear-cut. Some malignant tumours are indolent and slow-growing such that patients are more likely die with the cancer rather than of it, e.g. prostate cancer. Conversely, a meningioma is technically a benign tumour, but a large inoperable tumour is nonetheless lethal.

Neoplasms cause adverse effects principally from:

• Compression of surrounding structures, e.g.
  • Raised intracranial pressure in brain tumours
  • Bowel obstruction in colorectal cancer)
  • SVC syndrome in lung cancer
  • Dysphagia in oesophageal cancer
• Local invasion or infiltration, e.g.
  • Ulceration in gastric cancer
  • Rodent ulcer, i.e. basal cell carcinoma
• Metastasis
• Para-neoplastic syndromes