Metastasis - Signs and Symptoms

Signs and Symptoms

The symptoms of metastasis varies with location of the tumors.

Initially, nearby lymph nodes are struck early. The lungs, liver, brain, and bones are the most common metastasis locations from solid tumors.

  • In lymph nodes, a common symptom is lymphadenopathy
  • Lungs: cough, hemoptysis and dyspnea (shortness of breath)
  • Liver: hepatomegaly (enlarged liver), nausea and jaundice
  • Bones: bone pain, fracture of affected bones
  • Brain: neurological symptoms such as headaches, seizures, and vertigo.

Although advanced cancer may cause pain, it is often not the first symptom.

Some patients, however, don't show any symptoms. When the organ gets a metastatic disease it begins to shrink until its lymph nodes burst, or undergo lysis.

Read more about this topic:  Metastasis

Famous quotes containing the words signs and, signs and/or symptoms:

    Time has an undertaking establishment on every block and drives his coffin nails faster than the steam riveters rivet or the stenographers type or the tickers tick out fours and eights and dollar signs and ciphers.
    John Dos Passos (1896–1970)

    Young children scare easily—a tough tone, a sharp reprimand, an exasperated glance, a peeved scowl will do it. Little signs of rejection—you don’t have to hit young children to hurt them—cut very deeply.
    James L. Hymes, Jr. (20th century)

    The human condition is such that pain and effort are not just symptoms which can be removed without changing life itself; they are the modes in which life itself, together with the necessity to which it is bound, makes itself felt. For mortals, the “easy life of the gods” would be a lifeless life.
    Hannah Arendt (1906–1975)