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Not sure what you mean. If
Not sure what you mean. If you're asking about whether or not doctors know if a cancer survivor's recurrence of cancer is the same cancer as before, I think the only way to answer this is to say that in order for cancer to occur, a cell has to survive numerous mutations that would otherwise and normally cause the cell to die. But all it takes is one, which is why it's very hard to know if someone is truly cancer-free after treatment or not, because surgery can remove a tumor but there is no test that can tell you if EVERY SINGLE cancer cell has been removed from the body. If a person receives successful treatment for cancer and then months or years later develops cancer again, the only way to determine whether it's the 'same' cancer would probably be to sequence the genome of the original cancer and, when the person's cancer recurs, sequence the genome again. If they're identical, then it's the same cancer.
That said, you could probably safely say that if a person develops cancer again within a certain frame of time from when they had it before, that it's probably a recurrence. in other words, if a person is treated for cancer at 20 and then develops it again at 40, they're probably not the 'same' cancer, although it isn't uncommon for cancer treatment itself to cause secondary cancers to develop later in life.
Hi. Thank you for the
Hi. Thank you for the response, and it does clarify some of my questions. Specifically, uterine cancer was found and a historectomy was performed 10 years ago. A recurrence of cancer was diagnosed recently in the lymph nodes(can not find the organ it originated from), but was informed it can not be diagnosed as either Hodgkins or Non-hodgkins BECAUSE of the previous cancer. I don't understand this logic.I thought a blood stain or another chemical reaction from a biopsy would determine which kind of lymphoma it is? Isn't the type of lymphoma significant to the kind of treatment that would work best? Thank yo for the quick response.