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Cancer is a group of diseases involving abnormal cell growth with the potential to invade or spread to other parts of the body. [3] [4] Cancer can be difficult to diagnose because its signs and symptoms are often nonspecific, meaning they may be general phenomena that do not point directly to a specific disease process. [5]
If the total number of tumor cells found to meet the criteria cited above is 5 or more, a blood sample is positive. In studies done on prostate, breast and colon cancer patients, median survival of metastatic patients with positive samples is about half the median survival of metastatic patients with negative samples.
Length time bias in cancer screening. Screening appears to lead to better survival even when actually no one lived any longer. Length time bias (or length bias) is an overestimation of survival duration due to the relative excess of cases detected that are asymptomatically slowly progressing, while fast progressing cases are detected after giving symptoms.
Progression-free survival (PFS) is "the length of time during and after the treatment of a disease, such as cancer, that a patient lives with the disease but it does not get worse". [1] In oncology, PFS usually refers to situations in which a tumor is present, as demonstrated by laboratory testing, radiologic testing, or clinically. Similarly ...
Minimal residual disease (MRD), also known as Molecular residual disease, is the name given to small numbers of cancer cells that remain in a person either during or after treatment when the patient is in remission (no symptoms or signs of disease). Sensitive molecular tests are either in development or available to test for MRD.
Cancer screening is the effort to detect cancer early, during its pre-clinical phase—the time period that begins with an abnormal cell and ends when the patient notices symptoms from the cancer. It has long been known that some people have cancers with short pre-clinical phases (fast-growing, aggressive cancers), while others have cancers ...
Gene expression profiling is a technique used in molecular biology to query the expression of thousands of genes simultaneously. While almost all cells in an organism contain the entire genome of the organism, only a small subset of those genes is expressed as messenger RNA (mRNA) at any given time, and their relative expression can be evaluated.
The CEA blood test is not reliable for diagnosing cancer or as a screening test for early detection of cancer. [8] Most types of cancer do not result in a high CEA level. [9] Serum from individuals with colorectal carcinoma often has higher levels of CEA than healthy individuals (above approximately 2.5ng/mL). [10]