Category: Cancer

How fast can lung cancer spread or grow? There is no one definite answer to this question. Lung cancer behaves in different ways — the aggressive ones will grow immediately while others do not spread at all — so it is hard and foolish to put a timeline for lung cancer growth.

Still, it is important to note that lung cancer, compared to other kinds of cancer, tends to grow faster and spread earlier. This is specially true for small cell lung cancer which, to borrow the words of cancer.org, “tends to grow and spread quickly, and it has almost always spread to distant parts of the body before it is found”.

Small Cell Lung Cancer (SCLC). Small cell lung cancer comprises about 10% to 15% of all lung cancers. If a patient with small cell lung cancer is left untreated, he or she can die within six months from diagnosis.

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Are endometrial and uterine cancer the same? Or are they different? If they are two different things, how can a person differentiate one cancer from the other?

We wondered about the above question when we were writing our earlier post on celebrities with endometrial cancer. After some hours of research, this is what we found out:

Endometrial cancer is a type of uterine cancer in the same way that avocado is a type of a fruit.

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Can you die from skin cancer? Yes you can! In fact, according to the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), in 2011 — which is the most recent year for which data is available — a little more than 9,000 people in the United States died from melanomas of the skin.

Meanwhile, across the pond in the United Kingdom, a total of 2,148 people died from malignant melanoma in 2012. According to Cancer Research UK, malignant melanoma is the 18th most common cause of cancer deaths, accounting for 1% of all deaths from cancer.

That skin cancer is a deadly disease is evident in today’s news headlines which are reporting that, Colin Bloomfield, a popular BBC radio broadcaster succumbed to skin melanoma. He was only 33 years old. More about Colin from bbc.com:

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Color Genomics BRCA Test: Is Color Test Good or Bad? Color Genomics, a California-based company, is offering a more affordable test for the BRCA genetic mutation which increases a carrier’s risk of developing breast and ovarian cancer.

How much is a Color Genomics BRCA genetic test? According to the company, the test (aka Color Test) will cost $249. By point of comparison, the current price tag for other BRCA tests by other companies ranges from a not-bad $475 to a prohibitive $4,000.

Aside from testing for BRCA1 and BRCA2, the Color Test also looks at 17 other genes which are associated with higher risks for breast or ovarian cancer.

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