Cancer Approach to Care: Lessening Physical and Psychological Effects

Approach to Care of Cancer
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Approach to Care of Cancer
According to the National Institute of Cancer (2015), cancer is defined as an abnormal growth of body cells. It is also referred to as malignancy. Broadly speaking, cancer refers to a set of related diseases that makes some cells of the body to divide uncontrollably and spread into the patient’s surrounding body tissues. The human body consists of a huge number of cells and cancer can start at any of the cells then spread to other cells and tissues. The normal human body cells often grow and divide in an orderly manner forming new cells and once these cells get damaged or grow old, they end up dying and being replaced by new ones. However, the development of cancer disrupts this orderly form, making damaged or old cells to continue surviving with new ones forming unnecessarily. Such extra cells grow as well as divide uncontrollably and without stopping forming certain growths in the human body referred to as tumors. While most types of cancers form masses of tissues, solid tumors, blood cancers, including leukemia do not generally form tumors (National Institute of Cancer, 2015). The tumors resulting from cancer are malignant in the sense that they can invade or spread into nearby body tissues. Additionally, cancerous tumors can also break off from the cells or tissues in which they originated and then travel through the lymph or blood system to distant tissues forming new tumors away from the original tumor. In contrast, benign tumors are not capable of invading or spreading to the surrounding tissues and they often do not grow back once they are removed. It is noteworthy that there are over 100 different types of cancers and some of them include lymphoma, prostate cancer, colon cancer, lung cancer, skin cancer, and breast cancer (WebMd, 2017). This essay examines the diagnosis and staging of cancer, the complications of cancer, the side effects associated with the treatment of cancer, as well as provide recommendations on the methods to lessen psychological and physical effects.
The Diagnosis and Staging of Cancer
Although there are various types of symptoms associated with cancer, most of them are caused by benign tumors as well as other problems rather than by cancer itself. As such, the patient is required to undergo a physical exam and other procedures in order to determine the root cause of the symptoms. Cancer diagnosis entails certain procedures and tests aimed at not only identifying the presence and type of cancer but also the identity, stage, type, and location of cancer. Low or high levels of some substances in the human body can act as an indicator of cancer. As a result, lab tests can be performed on urine, blood, or other fluids of the body in order to measure such substances to help physicians make a diagnosis. There are various techniques of diagnosing cancer. The imaging procedures that can help in the diagnosis of cancer include CT scan, nuclear scan, ultrasound, magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), x-rays, and positron emission tomography (PET) scan. Recently, nanoparticles have also been exploited in cancer diagnosi. For instance, lung cancer can be diagnosed by using magnetic nanop...