Silly question

Paul1956 · New User Joined: 23 Aug 2008 Posts: 6

Hi,

If you have prostate cancer say that has gone to the brain is it still prostate cancer and would it be treated as brain cancer or still prostate cancer. like wise if you had breast cancer that had gone to the lung would this now be lung cancer and treated the same way as primary lung cancer or breast cancer.

Paul

pbj11 · Site Admin Joined: 12 May 2007 Posts: 1386

Paul,

Not silly at all. Wherever the spread, the cancer is still the original cancer with metastasis. If lung cancer spread to the liver and they could get a microscopic sample of the liver tumor, the cells would be lung cancer. All is treated with the same chemotherapy appropriate for the primary cancer.

Rarely do people get two primary cancers at the same time, but it does happen.

Best luck,
PBJ
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brainman · Posted: Sun Sep 21, 2008 7:28 pm Post subject: Re: Silly question

Hi Paul. If you took a biopsy of the tumor in the prostate and a biopsy of the metastatic tumor in the brain and viewed both under a microscope, they would look identical. I agree with pbj that the chemo would be the same. The reason that a primary brain cancer has different chemotherapy drugs is that primary brain cancers are within the brain barrier and most other drugs cannot penetrate that barrier.
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pbj11 · Site Admin Joined: 12 May 2007 Posts: 1386

Hey Jim,

Well, thanks for that "one step further" explanation. I didn't want to get into the whole blood/brain barrier issue but have often wondered how primary brain cancer can be treated with chemo at times. Huh, you learn something new every day.

PBJ
_________________
Husband diagnosed with NSCLC Stage IV. (Non-Small Cell Lung Cancer) Fought & lived 2 1/2 years with multiple lines of treatment.

Post describing our battle: http://cancerforums.net/viewtopic.php?t=7026&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=0

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