Unusual lumps or swelling (tumor), hemorrhage (bleeding), pain and/or ulceration. Compression of surrounding tissues may cause symptoms such as jaundice.
Systemic symptoms

Weight loss, poor appetite and cachexia (wasting), excessive sweating (night sweats), anemia and specific paraneoplastic phenomena, i.e. specific conditions that are due to an active cancer, such as thrombosis or hormonal changes.
Symptoms of metastasis (spreading)

Enlarged lymph nodes, cough and hemoptysis, hepatomegaly (enlarged liver), bone pain, fracture of affected bones and neurological symptoms. Although advanced cancer may cause pain, it is often not the first symptom.

A woman’s breast is made up of glands that make breast milk (lobules), ducts (small tubes that carry milk from the lobules to the nipple), fatty and connective tissue, blood vessels, and lymph (pronounced limf) vessels. Most breast cancers begin in the cells that line the ducts (ductal cancer), some begin in the lobules (lobular cancer), and the rest in other tissues.

Lymph vessels are like veins, except that they carry lymph fluid instead of blood. Lymph is a clear fluid that contains immune system cells and waste products. Most lymph vessels lead to small, bean-shaped collections of tissue called lymph nodes. Most lymph vessels of the breast lead to lymph nodes under the arm. These are called axillary (ax-uh-lair-ee) nodes.

If breast cancer cells reach the underarm lymph nodes and continue to grow, they cause the nodes to swell. Once cancer cells have reached these nodes they are more likely to spread to other organs of the body as well.

Benign Breast Lumps

Most breast lumps are benign (be-nine); that is, they are not cancer. Benign breast tumors are abnormal growths, but they do not spread outside of the breast and they are not life threatening. But some benign breast lumps can increase a woman’s risk of getting breast cancer.

Most lumps turn out to be caused by fibrocystic (fi-bro-sis-tik) changes. Cysts are fluid-filled sacs. Fibrosis is the formation of scar-like tissue. Such changes can cause breast swelling and pain. The breasts may feel lumpy, and sometimes there is a clear or slightly cloudy nipple discharge.

Main Types of Breast Cancer

Understanding key words as they relate to breast cancer can be a challenge. Here are the most common types of breast cancer:

Carcinoma in situ (in sigh-to): This term is used for early stage cancer, when it is confined to the place where it started. In breast cancer, it means that the cancer is confined to the ducts or the lobules, depending on where it started. It has not gone into the tissues in the breast nor spread to other organs in the body.
Ductal carcinoma in situ (DCIS): This is the most common type of noninvasive breast cancer. DCIS means that the cancer is confined to the ducts. It has not spread through the walls of the ducts into the tissue of the breast. Nearly all women with cancer at this stage can be cured. The best way to find DCIS early is with a mammogram.
Lobular carcinoma in situ (LCIS): This condition begins in the milk-making glands but does not go through the wall of the lobules. Although not a true cancer, having LCIS increases a woman’s risk of getting cancer later. For this reason, it’s important that women with LCIS to follow the screening guidelines for breast cancer..
Invasive (infiltrating) ductal carcinoma (IDC): This is the most common breast cancer. It starts in a milk passage or duct, breaks through the wall of the duct, and invades the tissue of the breast. From there it can spread to other parts of the body. It accounts for about 80% of invasive breast cancers.
Invasive (infiltrating) lobular carcinoma (ILC): This cancer starts in the milk glands or lobules. It can spread to other parts of the body. About 10% of invasive breast cancers are of this type. There are also several other less common types of breast cancer. What is breast cancer.

According to a telephone survey taken by American Cancer Society researchers, most of us either think pollution is more likely to cause lung cancer than smoking — or don′t know which is worse. Unfortunately, either answer is completely at odds with decades of scientific evidence that cigarette smoking is the number one cause of lung cancer by far.

And that’s just one of the things we are confused about when it comes to cancer risk factors, the researchers say. Many people hold mistaken beliefs about what will and won′t cause cancer, the survey results suggest. One common scenario is for people to give a lot of weight to unproven theories or to risk factors that make a relatively small contribution to cancer, but at the same time to ignore or minimize the cancer risk posed by other factors that really do have an impact.

The findings, published in the ACS journal Cancer, are based on a survey conducted in 2002 of nearly 1,000 US adults who had never had cancer. Participants were asked to respond to 12 statements about cancer with true, not true, or don’t know. Discovery Health Channel and Prevention magazine helped design the survey.

Lifestyle Factors That Make a Difference

“There are some gaps in the public’s understanding of cancer risk factors,” says study co-author Ted Gansler, MD, director of medical content at ACS. “The important thing is for people to know which things really make a difference for cancer.”

The issue of smoking, pollution, and lung cancer is one example. Nearly 40% of people in the survey said pollution is a greater risk factor for lung cancer than smoking, and another 19% weren’t sure.

Although pollution does contribute to lung cancer (as well as other problems like asthma, bronchitis, and heart disease), smoking trumps it — by a long shot. Smoking is responsible for about 87% of lung cancer deaths.

Quitting smoking — or never starting in the first place — is the most important thing you can do to lower your risk of lung cancer. Yet more than 15% of those surveyed did not believe that long-time smokers can reduce their cancer risk by quitting, and another 6% weren’t sure.

Another statement that raised a red flag with researchers: What someone does as a young adult has little effect on their chance of getting cancer later in life. Nearly 25% said that was true, and another 7% weren’t sure.

In reality, says Gansler, many things people do in their youth can have a profound impact on their future cancer risk.

For instance, young people may start smoking, thinking they can quit at any time, but quitting is actually very difficult. Furthermore, the younger people are when they start smoking, the more likely they are to smoke as adults, raising their risk for lung cancer and other cancers. Likewise, young people tend to be less concerned about sun exposure even though getting sunburned is known to raise the risk of developing skin cancer later in life. Young people may also engage in risky sex behaviors that boost their chances of catching or spreading HPV (human papillomavirus), the virus responsible for most cases of cervical cancer.

Unproven Theories a Source of Confusion

Certain groups of people were more likely than others to hold misconceptions about cancer risk factors: those who were male, older, non-white, less educated, and of lower income.

In one curious finding, the survey participants who described themselves as knowing the most about cancer were more likely to have some inaccurate beliefs. For instance, people who rated themselves as “very informed″ about cancer were more likely than those who were “somewhat informed″ to believe that underwire bras cause breast cancer, a largely discredited theory based on “extremely weak evidence,” says Gansler. Similarly, the “very informed″ respondents were more likely to believe that smokers cannot reduce their risk of cancer by quitting.

The take-home message: Make sure you can trust your sources of cancer information, says Gansler.

“There’s a substantial number of people who are very concerned about cancer but are not paying attention to the right issues,” Gansler says. “And they are not getting their information from the right sources.”

Trustworthy sources of cancer information include not-for-profit organizations like the American Cancer Society, and federal agencies like the National Cancer Institute and the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Gansler says. Other sources you can count on to be reliable include the nation’s leading cancer hospitals and treatment centers, he says.

And finally, he says, be very skeptical of any cancer information that is forwarded to you in email or that arrives unsolicited. Another red flag: Emails that mention a commercial product, particularly if they contain claims that their product is better somehow than the competition.

How Much Do You Know About What Causes Cancer

The stage of a cancer is a descriptor (usually numbers I to IV) of how much the cancer has spread. The stage often takes into account the size of a tumor, how deep it has penetrated, whether it has invaded adjacent organs, if and how many lymph nodes it has metastasized to, and whether it has spread to distant organs.

Staging of cancer is important because the stage at diagnosis is the most powerful predictor of survival, and treatments are often changed based on the stage.

Cancer Stage

Overall Stage Grouping is also referred to as Roman Numeral Staging. This system uses numerals I, II, III, and IV (plus the 0) to describe the progression of cancer.

Stage 0 Cancer

Carcinoma in situ.

Stage I Cancer

Cancers are localized to one part of the body.

Stage II Cancer

Cancers are locally advanced, as are Stage III cancers. Whether a cancer is designated as Stage II or Stage III can depend on the specific type of cancer; for example, in Hodgkin’s Disease, Stage II indicates affected lymph nodes on only one side of the diaphragm, whereas Stage III indicates affected lymph nodes above and below the diaphragm. The specific criteria for Stages II and III therefore differ according to diagnosis.

Stage IV Cancer

Cancers have often metastasized, or spread to other organs or throughout the body.

Cancer is a disease characterized by disorderly division of cells, combined with the malignant behavior of these cells. Malignant cancer cells tend to spread, either by by implantation into distant sites by metastasis (the process whereby cancer cells can move through the bloodstream or lymphatic system to distant locations), or direct growth into adjacent tissue through invasion .

Most cancers can be treated and some cured, depending on the specific type, location, and stage. Once diagnosed, cancer is usually treated with a combination of surgery, chemotherapy and radiotherapy. Cancer may affect people at all ages, but risk tends to increase with age. It is one of the principal causes of death in developed countries.

The Symptoms Of Cancer

Local symptoms

Unusual lumps or swelling (tumor), hemorrhage (bleeding), pain and/or ulceration. Compression of surrounding tissues may cause symptoms such as jaundice.

Systemic symptoms

Weight loss, poor appetite and cachexia (wasting), excessive sweating (night sweats), anemia and specific paraneoplastic phenomena, i.e. specific conditions that are due to an active cancer, such as thrombosis or hormonal changes.

Symptoms of metastasis (spreading)

Enlarged lymph nodes, cough and hemoptysis, hepatomegaly (enlarged liver), bone pain, fracture of affected bones and neurological symptoms. Although advanced cancer may cause pain, it is often not the first symptom.

Breast cancer is a cancer of the glandular breast tissue.

Worldwide, breast cancer is the fifth most common cause of cancer death (after lung cancer, stomach cancer, liver cancer, and colon cancer). Among women worldwide, breast cancer is the most common cancer. In 2005, breast cancer caused 502,000 deaths (7% of cancer deaths; almost 1% of all deaths) worldwide.

The number of cases has significantly increased since the 1970s, a phenomenon partly blamed on modern lifestyles in the Western world. Because the breast is composed of identical tissues in males and females, breast cancer also occurs in males, though it is less common.

The Symptoms Of Breast Cancer

Early breast cancer can in some cases present as breast pain (mastodynia) or a painful lump. A lump under the arm or above the collarbone that does not go away may be present. Since the advent of breast mammography, breast cancer is most frequently discovered as an asymptomatic nodule on a mammogram, before any symptoms are present.

Other possible symptoms or medical signs include nipple discharge, new nipple inversion, bleeding from the nipple, and changes in the skin overlying the breast, often resembling an orange peel, known as peau d′orange. When breast cancer associates with skin inflammation, this is known as inflammatory breast cancer. In inflammatory breast cancer, the breast tumor itself is causing an inflammatory reaction of the skin, and this can cause pain, swelling, warmth, and redness throughout the entire breast.

Lung cancer is the malignant transformation and expansion of lung tissue, and is responsible for 1.3 million deaths worldwide annually. It is the most common cause of cancer-related death in men, and the second most common in women.

Current research indicates that the factor with the greatest impact on risk of lung cancer is long-term exposure to inhaled carcinogens, especially tobacco smoke. While some people who have never smoked do still get lung cancer, this appears to be due to a combination of genetic factors and exposure to secondhand smoke. Radon gas and air pollution may also contribute to the development of lung cancer.

The Symptoms Of Lung Cancer

Symptoms that suggest lung cancer include

Colorectal cancer, also called colon cancer or bowel cancer, includes cancerous growths in the colon, rectum and appendix. Colorectal cancer causes 655,000 deaths worldwide per year. It is the third most common form of cancer and the second leading cause of death among cancers in the Western world. Many colorectal cancers are thought to arise from adenomatous polyps in the colon.

These mushroom-like growths are usually benign, but some may develop into cancer over time. The majority of the time, the diagnosis of localized colon cancer is through colonoscopy. Therapy is usually through surgery, which in many cases is followed by chemotherapy.

Early Symptoms Of Colon Cancer

Frequently, the patient may be asymptomatic. This is one reason why many organizations recommend periodic screening for the disease with fecal occult blood testing and colonoscopy. When symptoms do occur, they depend on the site of the lesion. Generally speaking, the nearer the lesion is to the anus, the more bowel symptoms there will be, such as

Ovarian cancer is a malignant ovarian neoplasm, an abnormal growth located on the ovaries.

The risk for developing ovarian cancer appears to be affected by several factors. The more children a woman has, the lower her risk of ovarian cancer. Early age at first pregnancy, older ages of final pregnancy and the use of low dose hormonal contraception have also been shown to have a protective effect. Ovarian cancer is reduced in women after tubal ligation.

Early Symptoms Of Ovarian Cancer

Cancer is a disease characterized by disorderly division of cells, combined with the malignant behavior of these cells. Malignant cancer cells tend to spread, either by by implantation into distant sites by metastasis (the process whereby cancer cells can move through the bloodstream or lymphatic system to distant locations), or direct growth into adjacent tissue through invasion .

Most cancers can be treated and some cured, depending on the specific type, location, and stage. Once diagnosed, cancer is usually treated with a combination of surgery, chemotherapy and radiotherapy. Cancer may affect people at all ages, but risk tends to increase with age. It is one of the principal causes of death in developed countries.

Early Symptoms Of Cancer

Local symptoms

Unusual lumps or swelling (tumor), hemorrhage (bleeding), pain and/or ulceration. Compression of surrounding tissues may cause symptoms such as jaundice.

Systemic symptoms

Weight loss, poor appetite and cachexia (wasting), excessive sweating (night sweats), anemia and specific paraneoplastic phenomena, i.e. specific conditions that are due to an active cancer, such as thrombosis or hormonal changes.

Symptoms of metastasis (spreading)

Enlarged lymph nodes, cough and hemoptysis, hepatomegaly (enlarged liver), bone pain, fracture of affected bones and neurological symptoms. Although advanced cancer may cause pain, it is often not the first symptom.