Breast Cancer

[eve1974]

I often hear of primary breast cancer metastasising to other parts of the body.

But can’t see much about if breast cancer can be the second cancer itself.

For Eg an initial tumour in the lungs (just an example) that THEN spreads to breast.

Anyone know how often / if this happens?

[calmck]

Breast cancer is usually a primary cancer that spreads to other parts of the body. A person could have a primary cancer elsewhere and then develop a separate breast cancer

[Sqad]

calmick is spot on......as usual.

A person can have 2 primaries....... unusual, but it happens and usually in the bowel ( Two separate bowel primaries).

[calmck]

Thanx Squad. 20 years nursing pays off

[LadyCG]

I've never known tumours in the breast to be secondaries.

[LadyCG]

I've known synchronous tumours in the oesophagus and bowel, breast and ovaries and recently came across a patient with multiple malignancies due to Von Hippel-Lindau Syndrome.

[Sqad]

Lady CG .....neither have I.

[Peter Pedant]

and if they are offset by a year or two same organ, metachronous

and of course - this discourse is uncharacteristically high brow one knows.... - one may predispose to the other - colon and rectum lead onto lymphoma - speaking personally

Breast as a site for secondaries ( spread from a primary ) is NOT on the list of common sites of secondaries which starts
lymph nodes, bone, liver, lung, brain -
a list Sqad will have learnt from thomson and cotton ( first ed around 1850)

[237SJ]

^ I agree PP - the last place that breast cancer ends up is the brain.

[Sqad]

237.....not strictly true.
About 1 in 5 women may have a metastases to the brain as the only site of spread and this may be a solitary brain metastases.

[237SJ]

OK Sqad. It's just that when my Mum and her sister had (and died of) breast cancer, the Oncologist said that when women have breast cancer for a long time (and survive it for a long time) it ends up going to their brain

[237SJ]

And it stands to reason really. It's gone through the bones, lungs and where else can it go? Upwards to the brain.

[Sqad]

I agree with the comments of the Oncologist in the "majority" of cases.........but not all.

[Sqad]

No! no!.....the metastases can pass though all those structures that you mention, without "settling", get to the brain and there "seed or settle" leaving all the organs that you mentioned......unaffected. A sole, solitary brain metastasis.

[237SJ]

No, not all but I think you can pretty much work out how that disease is going to pan out. It's a wicked disease.

[horselady]

Do you think there will ever be a time when cancer will be cured? Even now with the huge advancements in medicine, it's still a word that instils instant fear in most of us. So much money goes into research, quite rightly, surely at sometime there will be a breakthrough moment.

[eve1974]

It does indeed strike fear. However it is being beaten more often than it used to be. My husband is in remission (3 years) acute myeloid leukaemia.... my mum recently diagnosed with breast cancer (which is why I posted my orig question on if it cldv been a secondary .,,. But that seems unlikely given all the answers x