• Question: is it all cancer that kills

    Asked by anon-328045 on 15 Jun 2022.
    • Photo: Karin Purshouse

      Karin Purshouse answered on 15 Jun 2022:

      So this is a really interesting question, but the first thing to say is that fortunately, due to advances in treatment, cancer, especially when it is caught early, is often very treatable through a combination of surgery, radiotherapy and/or drug treatments.

      There are some cancers that very rarely spread anywhere else, such as some types of skin cancer, although we still like to remove them because they just keep growing and that causes problems. Some cancers can keep growing and do so very slowly, like some types of prostate cancer (although many do require treatment) – so it’s very possible for someone to have prostate cancer but it will never trouble them. We also screen for early changes that might lead to an established cancer, such as cervical cancer screening, but ultimately we will never know for sure if these early cancer type changes would definitely have lead to a cancer. We just know the odds are in favour of removing them to stop the chance of things progressing.

      So it’s a great question! I hope my answer makes sense.

    • Photo: Chelsea Gerada

      Chelsea Gerada answered on 16 Jun 2022:

      Most cancers have the potential to kill if we do not detect them early enough. Thankfully for some cancers now we have decent detection methods which means we can treat them with surgery or combination therapy effectively. However, other cancers aren’t detected until later stages which means they have a higher chance of causing death. Thats why we need to develop both better detection methods and different therapeutic options for patients.

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