How can a cancer affect the foot?

Cancer is defined as if you have an abnormal excessive growth of any kind of tissue. So does or can cancer impact the foot? Certainly it can, as the foot has all the same tissues as other regions of the body. Cancer in the foot is really uncommon, however when it does occur it has the potential to be very serious since it is frequently missed or wrongly diagnosed as somethng not too serious. There's two kinds of cancer that will impact the foot. The first is where the cancer originates in the foot, so this can be in the any tissue from the skin to the bone to joint or the tendons to the nerves or the blood vessels. Because the foot is a weight-bearing part of the body and it has a lot of things which might go wrong a really high index of suspicion is needed to distinguish one of these primary cancers from what could be considered a regular and frequent foot condition. This is the reason the competence of a good skilled clinician is needed to handle foot disorders and to exclude one of these more probably significant ailments that are uncommon.

The other type of cancer which might affect the foot is a metastasis or a spread of the cancer from another part of the body. This cancer may be already be clinically diagnosed and might spread to the foot where it produces pain in the foot. On the other hand the cancer may start growing in a different part of the body and it is un-diagnosed there and it sends a metastasis or propagates to the foot and causes pain in the foot. This is very uncommon but when it can happen it's very serious since it generally signifies that the original cancer is well established. It also presents a diagnostic problem for the clinician that is seeking to identify the reason for the pain in the foot. Again, a very high index of suspicion and instinct is necessary by the clinician to pick this up in the first stages. The sooner that these types of cancers are clinically diagnosed the better the outcome might be.