Understanding Cancer

Cancer is a description of a whole range of illnesses. In all there are several hundred types of cancers, each behaving in a different way, causing different symptoms and needing different treatment.

To make sense of these huge number of conditions, doctors have devised ways of classifying cancers into groups which have some features in common.

The simplest, and most widely used classification scheme is based on the type of cell which has produced the cancer. This gives four main headings which include the great majority of all cancers: Carcinomas, Sarcomas, Lymphomas and Leukaemias.