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Posts Tagged ‘Organs Of The Body’

Kidney cancer stage descriptions are an important tool your doctor can use to characterize the progression of a case of kidney cancer. By diagnosing the stage, the doctor is able to judge which possible treatment plans will best suit the patient’s needs.

Knowing the stage gives both the doctor and the patient a firm idea of how serious the disease has become and how much the cancer has spread beyond the kidneys. Are there cancer cells only in the kidney, or have cells spread to nearby lymph nodes, glands, or even to other organs of the body? With this in mind, you can understand why knowing the stage is necessary for making a prognosis and designing a treatment regimen.

There are a variety of evaluations made in assigning a stage to an individual’s kidney cancer. After looking at the diagnostic evidence and test results, a stage betweeen 1 and 4 will be assigned. It’s also possible the doctor will assign a Roman numeral to the stage, but this practice is usually done by medical professionals and not the general public.

Knowing the stage can also give kidney cancer patients a reasonably reliable way to guess survival rates (which are usually based on 5-year intervals). Each case has many variables, of course. But in general, it’s logical that someone in an early stage is more likely to survive longer than someone in a later stage.

Here’s how medical professionals evaluate the progress of kidney cancer and assign a stage to the case.

Stage 1 - The cancer is “localized,” meaning that no cancer cells have broken off and spread to surrounding tissues or organs. The size of the tumor is no more than 7 centimeters (about 2.8 inches).

Stage 2 - This is a stage in which the cancerous area has grown and is now larger than 2.8 inches or 7 centimeters. But cancerous cells have not spread to other organs or parts of the body. The cancer is still located only in a kidney.

Stage 3 - Danger is growing and treatment options become more complicated at this stage because cancer cells have spread. Typically, this means they can now be found in an adrenal gland (located above each kidney), a nearby major vein, or no more than one lymph node.

Stage 4 - At Stage 4, kidney cancer has reached a very dangerous point. The cancer has metastacized, meaning it has spread to other parts of the body and is affecting other tissues or possibly a distant organ. It can now also be found in more than one lymph node.

Assigning a stage to kidney cancer is not the only way to measure how serious it is. Medical professionals have also come up with a “grading” system. The grade is a way of describing how cancer cells look when placed under a microscope.

When normal cells and abnormal cells don’t look much different, they’ll be given a lower grade (lower, in this case, is good) But if the cancer cells look very different from the normal cells, they’ll receive a higher grade. Grade designations are important to know because they often indicate how quickly the cancer may spread. Cancers that receive a higher grade typically spread more quickly, and are therefore more dangerous.

The most important thing to remember about kidney cancer stages is their value in helping the doctor determine the best way to treat the disease.

Kidney cancer tends to happen to adults who are more than 50 years old. Twice as many men get kidney cancer as women. Research from the American Cancer Society tells us that 30,000 Americans are diagnosed with kidney cancer annually, and approximately 12,000 die from it.

Of course, everyone hopes these numbers will decrease as treatment methods improve and research gets closer to a cure. But until that happens, using the kidney cancer stage and grade systems will provide medical professionals with valuable tools in saving as many lives as possible.

Related topics: what are the stages of kidney cancer and kidney cancer info. Neal Kennedy is a former radio and television journalist. To read more of his articles, click on kidney trouble.

Herpes cold sore is a common illness caused by the herpes simplex viruses. One can easily characterized this infection by noticing a bunch of fluid filled blisters that appears either on red area of the skin or the mucous membrane. After activation, these blisters heal fast, however, they have tendency to reappear.

Viruses of cold sores are of two types, one is herpes simplex type I (HSV I) and other is herpes simplex type II (HSV II). HSV I cause the cold sores and HSV II causes genital herpes that comes on the genital organs of the body.

However, both types of viruses can infect any area of skin and mucous membrane. Almost 80% of the adult peoples have antibodies against HSV I in their body where as about 25% of adult peoples have antibodies against HSV II. Usually viruses transmit through close personal contact with active lesion. These viruses will attack the body in childhood but will never shows symptoms until teen age.

Entry of the viruses in the body is through mouth and then attacks the nerve cells. From there they travel towards the ganglia via nervous system. In ganglia viruses lays in dormant state. In the positive situations viruses comes in active stage and cold sores will out breaks. Weak defense of body to viruses lead to reactivation of the viruses and blisters will again out breaks.

Infection of these viruses can progress in different ways. Some of the peoples have mild or no symptoms. When the viruses gets active they will out breaks the blisters. First out break of blisters starts one to two weeks after the activation and collapse few weeks later. Afterward whenever the viruses will activate blisters will return. Symptom of out breaking is unpleasant tingling feeling in the skin; subsequently number of fluid filled blisters will appear on the skin. Later on scab will cover all the sores and will fall within 8 to 10 days. Until scab covers the sores viruses spreads infection continuously.

Therefore, to avoid the infection by the viruses avoid direct contact with the sores. If such contact occurs, viruses will spread the infection every part of the body that includes fingers and genital organs. You have to wash your hands regularly particularly when you touch lips. Picking at the sores need to be avoided, as this will lead in spreading the viruses as well as it will result in bacterial infection of the sores. To avoid the reactivation of the viruses body need to healthy and therefore try to include healthy food in your regular diet. Key to avoid the infection is varied diet, regular exercise and enough sleep.

Major triggering that activates the viruses is fever, long exposure to sunlight, pregnancy, and menstruation. However, triggering varies from person to person. Therefore, while going out apply sunscreen lotion to the body and also consume healthy and nutritive food. This will help you in shielding the body from infection and reactivation.