Spinal cancer most common sign is severe and prolonged pain. Tumors of the spine and spinal cord and cancers are relatively rare.
The most common symptom that patients with a spinal tumor of spinal cancer have is pain.
Because back pain is very common, it is noted that this pain also sometimes be related to some other ailment or disorder or medical condition.
Now, the challenge is with the goal of specifically excluding a tumor as the cause of the pain to determine how to evaluate back pain. Luckily, most back pain is not due to a tumor.
Most patients would feel that their problem should have been investigated more thoroughly in the beginning, if a cancer were discovered after a long period of “conservative” management of back pain.
The out-of-control growth among cells that reside in the spinal column or neural tissues leads to the cause of most primary tumors. In a small number of individuals, primary tumors may be associated from exposure to radiation or cancer-causing chemicals or with a specific genetic disease such as neurofibromatosis.
However, the cause of most primary tumors remains a mystery and is unknown till date. Fact is that they are neither contagious nor preventable.
Secondary or metastatic tumors are the spinal tumors of spinal cancer that are the result of cancer spreading from other parts of the body. The spreading of cancer from one part of the body to another is called metastasis.
As the origin is from cancerous tumors elsewhere in the body all secondary tumors are malignant. Spinal tumors causing spinal cancer are also classified by the part of the spine where they are located. These classifications are called thoracic, lumbar, cervical and sacrum.
People whose cancer has spread to the central nervous system have cancer cells circulating in their spinal fluid is about four percent.
Non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, small cell lung cancer, leukemia or blood cancer, lymphoma, breast cancer and melanoma most frequently spread to the spinal fluid. At the time of their initial diagnosis Fewer than ten percent of acute lymphocytic leukemia patients have metastases.
Over 80 percent of spine tumors of spinal cancer are present with pain. Pain that continues to get worse despite treatment is the symptom that may suggest that a tumor or a cancer is responsible for the pain and also they may be associated with other symptoms such as fatigue or weight loss.
Treatment! Surgery followed by radiation is more effective than radiation alone in treating certain patients suffering from spinal cord compression caused by metastatic spinal cancer; this means the cancer that has spread from other regions or to other regions, the advances stage.
The ability to walk and to control their bladder for a longer period of time is retained by addition of surgery.
In 10 to 20 percent of all cancer patients, spinal cord compression occurs especially lung, prostate and breast cancer patients. The spinal cord can be compressed and can cause some patients to lose mobility or bladder control when a tumor spreads to the vertebrae.
