Best Doctors for Cancer Treatment in Hyderabad

Staging plays a key role in both the diagnosis and treatment of cancer. Typically, staging refers to the characteristics of an individual cancer, which includes factors like the location and size of the cancer, its metastasis, and the severity of the tumor cells. Most cancers are classified into 4 stages, namely:

• Stage 1 or early cancer: In this stage, the cancer is superficial, i.e., it has not progressed into deeper tissues and lymph nodes.
• Stage 2: The cancer has spread into the deeper tissues but not into body sites and lymph nodes.
• Stage 3: The cancer cells have grown deeply into neighboring tissue and spread to lymph nodes but haven't spread to distant sites in the body.
• Stage 4: This is considered as the advanced stage of the cancer, which has grown beyond the neighboring cells and lymph nodes and into the organs or parts of the body potentially very far from the original site.

Detecting cancer at the early stages is very crucial, thus it is very important to be aware of the signs and symptoms of cancer. Cancer symptoms can be more specific, affecting a particular area of the body, for example, either the skin or the stomach, while they can also be generalized, affecting the entire body. Some of the common signs and symptoms are:

• Lump under the skin (not all the lumps are cancerous)
• Unexplained sudden weight loss
• Unhealing sores
• Skin changes such as discoloration of the skin
• Fatigue
• Night sweats
• Bowel changes
• Loss of appetite
• Joint pains and others

There are different approaches to treat cancer depending on the stage, type, and condition of the patient. Some people with cancer will have only one treatment, but most people have a combination of treatments, such as surgery with chemotherapy and radiation therapy.

• Chemotherapy: This technique employs certain drugs to kill the cancer cells.
• Hormone therapy: This is the most dependent approach in patients with breast and prostate cancer, where the therapy stops the growth of hormones that these cells use to grow.
• Radiation therapy: As the name suggests, medical experts utilize high-energy particles or waves, such as gamma rays, x-rays, electron beams, or protons, to destroy and damage cancer cells.
• Surgery: This technique involves the surgical removal of cancer from the body.