Unknown Primary Cancers
What Is It?
Basically, this means that you have a cancer somewhere, but your doctor is not exactly sure where it started to grow.Your body is made up of billions of cells that can only be seen under a microscope. The cells are grouped together to make up the tissues and organs of our bodies.
Normally cells only divide to replace old and worn out cells. Cancer develops when something inside a single cell goes wrong, causing the cell to carry on dividing until it forms a lump or tumour. A tumour can be either benign or malignant. A benign tumour does not spread to other parts of the body. But a malignant tumour is a cancer and can spread to other parts of the body.
The place where the cancer starts growing is called the primary site. If the cancer is not treated, cells from this primary site can break away and spread to other parts of the body. These escaped cells can then form other cancers, which are known as secondary cancers or metastases.
Cancers are named and treated according to where they started developing in the body - their primary site - even if they have spread to other parts of the body. For example if you have lung cancer that has spread to the liver, it is a lung cancer with liver metastases or secondaries. It is not called liver cancer.
Normally it is easy to find the primary cancer. Either it will be producing symptoms or it will be seen on a scan. But sometimes secondary cancers are found in one or more parts of the body, but the doctor is unable to find the primary site. This is called cancer of unknown primary (UPT).