Paraneoplastic SCLC - 1291040

Thanks for your added info. I combined your 2 most recent threads and you can post at the bottom of this page in response. Don't worry about about the long post I know you've tried to make it as succinct as possible and I do ramble a bit.

The short answer is no, there is no known connection between sclc and symptoms that appear prior to the growth of a malignant tumor. Also, it would be quite rare for a sclc to take a year to grow to a size that causes symptoms. But cancer can do anything. Many oncologist describe every person's cancer is a unique disease.

When speaking about precancerous phase it's usually meant that abnormal nonmalignant cells have been found that have the ability to change into malignant cells. It's something that can be seen but usually doesn't have symptoms unless the symptoms are from a nodule of abnormal cells pressing on a structure that causes the symptoms.

"Small cell cancers can sometimes act like miniature glands. They can secrete a range of chemicals and hormones. These substances can make a person sick in and of themselves. Doctors call this paraneoplastic (par-uh-knee-oh-plas-tick) disorder or phenomenon." http://www.health.harvard.edu/cancer/small-cell-lung-cancer

Dr. West responded to a similar question, "...it's reasonable to check for any evidence of a cancer when a condition that could be a paraneoplastic syndrome (coincident with a cancer) is detected." http://cancergrace.org/forums/index.php?topic=1727.0

Finding lung cancer because of a finding of paraneoplastic is truly a rare case. Dr. West has spent the good part of the last 20 years studying and treating lung cancer. He went on to say, "I have never encountered a patient who was found to have a cancer by prior diagnosis of a paraneoplastic syndrome, except for multiple blood clots (the risk for developing blood clots is 4-6 times higher in someone with cancer than in other people)."

I hope some of this helps.
Sincerely,
Janine

RW,

We are indeed lucky to have Dr. West and the many other specialists he's recruited who give from their very busy lives to educate us lay people so we can be a part of the team making the tough decisions. Maybe my favorite part is that all these doctors are taking part in social media to educate and consolidate information for and from patients with the express intent of giving better care. That was unheard of 10 years ago. I remember in 1990 I looked up information online about a medical issue and my doctor was flabbergasted I'd do such a thing as try to educate myself about a disease, and from the internet of all places. We still have a long way to go before most of our healthcare pros encourage these practices but it's exciting for me to just be in the front office of this forum where the goal is to educate.

It's believed that a tumor can produce paraneoplastic syndrome it's not produced by just lots of circulating tumor cells so there needs to be a tumor, a place where the cancer cells have collected to form a tumor. There isn't an answer to the question of how many cells there must be to cause paraneoplastic syndrome but we do know it's extremely rare to find cancer because of the syndrome, suggesting a tumor needs to be large enough to have caused cancer symptoms of its own and certainly large enough to be easily seen on a scan. Dr. Weiss stated, "The tip of a pen is the size of more than ten billion cells." http://cancergrace.org/lung/2010/04/05/an-introduction-to-lung-cancer/#… So we're talking about 10s of billions of cancer cells.

We're still learning about cancer. Unfortunately there's more we don't know than what we do know. There's a reason it's known as the emperor of all disease.

Janine