WHAT DO WE MEAN BY “THINGS ARE GOING WELL”?- YouTumor

This section of the website is devoted to those patients in whom CT and the other imaging examinations find no visible signs of disease, and who are therefore progressing towards cure. Of course, we cannot exclude the possibility of relapse, but this is only a possibility and, at the moment, we have no reason to think it will happen. In general, these patients have had a stage-1, -2 or -3 tumor, which has been completely eliminated FIGURES 9 and 10.

**Fig. 9 Adjuvant therapy is useless, as there are no micrometastases and the patient has already been cured by the surgical operation** FIG 9. The white circle indicates the primary tumor that has not spread metastases up to the surgical intervention ( the long thin red arrow). In this case adjuvant therapy is not required because surgery has already eliminated all cancer cells.

**Fig 10. Adjuvant therapy is crucial because there are micrometastases; the patient would have relapsed, but is cured by the therapy, which eliminates the micrometastases** Fig 10. The white circle indicates the primary tumor that has already spread metastases at the time of surgical intervention (the long thin red arrow). In this case adjuvant therapy has eliminated the residual cancer cells and the patient is cured . Unfortunately today it is not yet possible to predict if adjuvant therapy will work, as in this case, or if it does not work.

This situation contrasts sharply with the metastatic condition (stage 4). In the case of stage-4 disease, when we say “things are going well”, we mean that the therapy is reducing the tumor and its metastases and that the patient feels well. However, the basic problem still remains; once the tumor has spread metastases to other parts of the body, it is highly unlikely that it can be eliminated without further relapse, apart from a few exceptions. The exceptions encountered in stage-4 metastatic disease are described and discussed in the section devoted to the treatment of advanced cancer (DIFFERENT DEGREES OF GRAVITY OF THE ADVANCED STAGE OF CANCER). In such circumstances, a cure might still be possible, though it is, unfortunately, exceptional.

AVOIDING MISUNDERSTANDINGS: WHAT DO WE MEAN BY “THINGS ARE GOING WELL”?

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