• Question: are there classes of tumours, if so, how many are there?

    Asked by anon-331968 on 29 Jun 2022.
    • Photo: Jocelyn Bisson

      Jocelyn Bisson answered on 27 Jun 2022:

      Yes there are. Tumours are typically broadly categorised by the location of the cell they originate from (i.e. lung cancer, brain cancer, breast cancer etc). Within these broad locations several different types of cancer may occur, some more aggressive than others and so we split them into more classes again (i.e. there are more than 5 different types of breast cancer). Finding out the main location and the type of tumour helps us to decide on the best treatment options. I’m not sure exactly how many different classes of tumours there are but it’s more than 200!

    • Photo: Zahra Massoud

      Zahra Massoud answered on 28 Jun 2022:

      Yep! Tumours are often classed by where they start, and also the cell type they start in. There’s over 200 broad categories of cancer, but also subtypes within those!

    • Photo: Karin Purshouse

      Karin Purshouse answered on 28 Jun 2022:

      As Jocelyn and Zahra have mentioned, there are lots of different ways of classifying cancer types.

      The World Health Organisation (WHO) actually have a classification for all diseases and illnesses – this is called the International Classification of Diseases (ICD), or ICD-10 (it’s on its 10th edition I think). All cancers are classified in this, as are all other illnesses and diseases. Coding illnesses sounds hugely unexciting but it’s actually incredibly important because it means we can compare between hospitals but even between countries – everything from how much of any given cancer there is, to how well we are doing at treating them!

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