March 04, 2024
The treatment of cancer has always been a difficult problem that the medical community needs to overcome. The key reason why cancer is difficult to treat is the risk of metastasis or recurrence. In most patients, cancer will come back after surgery, chemotherapy, radiotherapy and other standardized treatments.
When faced with cancer recurrence, patients often experience anger, fear, pain, and self-doubt. Cancer recurrence brings emotional and physical exhaustion, as well as a second uncertainty.
So, what is cancer recurrence and why does cancer come back?
Cancer recurrence is divided into local recurrence, regional recurrence and distant recurrence. Early detection of cancer recurrence is very important. Cancer recurs because cancer treatments fail to completely remove cancer cells and because cancer cells may become resistant to treatment. Cancer recurrence is different from a second primary cancer, so confirmation when a second cancer is diagnosed is crucial. In order to prevent the recurrence of cancer, patients need adjuvant treatment to remove microscopic lesions in the body.
What is cancer recurrence?
Cancer recurrence can simply be thought of as the cancer coming back after a period of time when the cancer lesions are no longer detectable in the patient's body after treatment. These cancer cells may lie dormant for a while, but eventually they continue to multiply, causing the cancer to reappear.
Cancer recurrence is divided into local recurrence, regional recurrence and distant recurrence.
Why does cancer come back?
One of the reasons why cancer recurs is that the original treatment did not completely remove all cancer cells, leaving the remaining cancer cells to grow back into new tumors. Another reason is that some cancer cells have spread to other parts of the body and have begun to appear in other parts of the body. Tumors grow and form there.
How to deal with cancer recurrence?
In fact, even if there is no sign that there are still cancer cells in the patient's body, it does not mean that the cancer has been cured, but only that the cancer is in remission.
Because there may be some cancer cells "cunningly" hiding in the patient's body. They have either not been discovered yet, or have not caused any symptoms, or are in an inactive state and have not grown.
To prevent the cancer from coming back, patients may need some type of long-term adjuvant therapy, such as endocrine therapy or targeted therapy. At the same time, adjuvant chemotherapy or radiotherapy can also be performed after surgery to completely eliminate tiny residual lesions in the body.
Of course, if cancer does recur, patients do not need to panic. Compared with other times, patients tend to know more about cancer and are more experienced with treatment options. They know what side effects may occur and how to deal with them. All this is beneficial to cancer treatment.
write at the end
Cancer recurrence is not that scary. I believe that with this combat experience, I will succeed the second time!
