Two months after a colectomy,my mom recently had a brain scan which showed 2 nodules in the left parietal lobe.The doctors have ruled out TB and toxoplasmosis.Her doctor says that colon cancer can not spread to her brain without affecting the liver.Is that True?
Cancer - 2 Answers
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1 :
First of all, good luck to you and your mother in what must be a very difficult time. Your mothers' doctor was correct. The way cancer spreads is that cancerous cells break off from the main tumor and spread via the bloodstream. The entirety of your blood volume is filtered through your liver before returning to the rest of the body; therefore, it is virtually impossible for foreign matter such as cancerous cells to pass through the liver without being trapped. I hope this clarifies things for you. To Denisedd: To be sure, where serious health conditions such as this are involved a second opinion is always a good idea, and you make a good point that cancer certainly is an unpredictable disease. In trying to simplify things for the poster, I evidently left out too much information. GENERALLY SPEAKING you are correct... cancer does not ALWAYS met. to the liver. Things such as type of cancer, blood flow/routes to the involved region, co morbidity, and other factors come into play which can cause other organs to be involved while leaving the liver relatively intact.... but the doctor said "affect the liver", not "met. to the liver" it is perfectly reasonable to expect some affect on the liver, even if it does not actually become cancerous.... if half the circulation through the liver is cut off by sloughed off cells, that would certainly be enough to "affect" the liver, don't you think? ...although I suppose a better choice of words would have been "it is highly unlikely that colon cancer would..." as opposed to "colon cancer can not..." At any rate, the doctor has access to her chart and the weeks, months, or year's worth of information contained therein... and all we have to go on is a single paragraph. It's actually a bit presumptuous for us to say one way or another whether he's right or wrong.
2 :
No it isn’t true. I can’t believe any doctor would say such a thing. Colon cancer almost always metastasizes to the liver first, but sometimes it does not. Anyone who works in oncology will tell you cancer does not always behave the way we expect it to and nothing can be assumed. Cancer spreads through the bloodstream or through the lymphatic system. Your mother should get a second opinion.
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