Are there any other features of my cancer that I should be aware of?

Well, as we mentioned above, cancers are abnormal cells. And there can be different types of cancer cells even in the same organ. For example, a lung cancer can be a squamous cell carcinoma, an adenocarcinoma, a large cell carcinoma, or a small cell carcinoma.

And, the mortality rates and the treatments may differ substantially for the different cell types.

In addition, the degree of abnormality even in the same cell type can differ from patient to patient. For example, the most common type of prostate cancer is adenocarcinoma.

But some prostate cancer patients with adenocarcinoma have slowly growing cancer cells while others with the same adenocarcinoma might have more rapidly growing cancer cells.

In prostate cancer the degree of aggressiveness of the cancer cells is called the Gleason Score which ranges from 1-10. And the chance of a patient surviving depends in part on the Gleason Score. For example, the higher the Gleason Score is (which means the more aggressive the cancer), the lower the percentage of patients that survive.

This means that, in addition to the type of cancer you have and the stage, you need to know the cancer cell type and how aggressive it is.

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