Making the Diagnosis of Hepatobiliary Cancer

 

When first diagnosed with cancer, many people ask the question “What is cancer?” Cancer is an abnormal and uncontrolled growth of cells in the body. Cancers also have the potential to spread to other areas of the body. The spread of a malignant tumor from one area of the body to another is known as metastasis. The part of the body where the tumor originates from is known as the primary tumor, and the area of spread is the metastatic site.

 

The specific type of cancer is determined by a procedure that is  known as a biopsy. A biopsy is when a small piece of tissue is removed from the body, and examined by a pathologist under a microscope. Pathologists study the tissue biopsy to determine the origin of the tumor and other important features such as grade, differentiation, and lymph node involvement.

 

Once the type of cancer is identified, an oncologist, who is a physician who specializes in the diagnosis and treatment of cancer, will determine how advanced the disease is, by determining its stage.

 

The stage is based on the size of the tumor, whether it has invaded any other surrounding tissues or lymph nodes, and whether the cancer has spread, or metastasized to another location in the body. This is the TMN staging system where T represents tumor size, M for any sites of metastatic disease, N for the number of lymph nodes involved. The information from the TMN staging system is combined into an overall tumor stage labeled as I, II, III, or IV. The stages are called I, II, III, and IV, with stage IV being the most advanced stage of cancer meaning that the tumor has spread to at least one other area of the body (www.cancer staging.org).