How fast does sarcoma grow?
Despite the fact that there are over 50 different varieties
of sarcoma, they can be divided into two categories: soft tissue sarcoma and
bone sarcoma, often known as osteosarcoma. In 2022, the United States will see
13,190 new cases of soft tissue sarcoma and 800-900 new cases of bone sarcoma.
Sarcomas can usually be treated with surgery to remove the
tumor.
Sarcoma
Risk Factors
We don't know what causes sarcoma, but we do know a few
things that increase your chances of getting one:
- Sarcoma has affected others in your family.
- Paget's disease is a bone ailment that you have.
- You have a hereditary condition called neurofibromatosis, for example. Gardner
- Li-Fraumeni syndrome, retinoblastoma, or syndrome
- You've been exposed to radiation, perhaps as a result of earlier cancer treatment.
Sarcoma
Symptoms
Soft tissue sarcomas can form anywhere on your body, making
them difficult to detect. A painless lump is usually the first clue. As the
lump grows larger, it may press against nerves or muscles, causing discomfort, breathing difficulties, or both. There are no diagnostics available to
detect these cancers before they develop symptoms.
Early signs and symptoms of osteosarcoma include:
- Pain in the damaged bone that comes and goes, possibly worst at night
- Swelling occurs weeks after the pain first appears.
- If the sarcoma is in your leg, you may limp.
Osteosarcoma is more common in children and young adults
than in adults. Osteosarcoma may be misdiagnosed as growing pains or a sports
injury in healthy, active children and teenagers since discomfort and swelling
in their arms and legs are common. Consult a doctor if your child's pain
persists, gets worse at night, or is limited to one arm or leg rather than both.
Adults experiencing this type of pain should seek medical
attention immediately.
Diagnosing
Sarcoma
If your doctor suspects you have sarcoma, you'll likely
require a thorough examination and tests, including:
- A biopsy is a sample of cells taken from the tumor.
- CT scans, ultrasounds, and MRIs are examples of imaging testing.
- look into your own body
- If you think you could have osteosarcoma, do a bone scan.
Sarcoma Treatments
The type of sarcoma you have, where it is in your body, how
advanced it is, and whether or not it has spread to other regions of your body
(metastasized) determine how your sarcoma is treated.
The tumor is removed from your body during surgery. In most osteosarcoma cases, the doctor will be able to remove only the cancer cells
and not your arm or leg.
Before surgery, radiation can reduce the tumor or destroy
cancer cells that remain after surgery. If surgery isn't a possibility, it
could be the primary treatment.
Chemotherapy
medications can be used in conjunction with or in place of
surgery. When cancer has spread, chemotherapy is frequently the first
treatment.
Targeted
therapies are more recent treatments that use medications or
synthetic replicas of antibodies from the immune system to stop cancer cells
from growing while leaving healthy cells alone.
Surviving Sarcoma
If the tumor is low-grade, which implies it won't spread to
other parts of the body, most persons with soft tissue sarcomas can be healed
with surgery alone. Sarcomas that are more aggressive are more difficult to
treat.
If cancer has not moved outside the location where it
began, the survival rate for osteosarcoma is between 60% and 75%. If all cancer can be removed by surgery, it is more likely to be cured.
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