What are Typical Cancer Symptoms?

Knowing typical cancer symptoms can help people feel informed about what warning signs to look out for. Unfortunately, there are no universal symptoms of cancer. All cancers are different and can present in quite different ways depending on the particular type of cancer, the location of the tumor(s) and the individual patient. To better understand the possible symptoms of cancer, it is best to study the individual types of cancer you are interested in as that will narrow down the symptoms to those most associated with that specific disease.

While there is no one set of symptoms that we can list to cover all cancers, there are a few general classes of symptoms which patients with cancer can experience...

First, it should be understood that many malignant tumors can initially cause no symptoms at all! While most cancers will eventually cause symptoms once they become larger, more invasive or more widespread in the body, early in their development they may cause no symptoms or only very vague symptoms.

Second, there are local symptoms which are associated with the tumor itself and the tissue destruction it causes locally, at the site of the tumor. For example, patients with lung cancer can present with shortness of breath, cough, bloody sputum or other symptoms directly related to the lungs and the impact of the cancer on the lung function.

Some examples of local signs and symptoms of various cancers include:

• Cough, shortness of breath and/or bloody sputum with lung cancer
• Feeling a painless lump in the breast with breast cancer
• Bloody stools with colon cancer
• Bone pain with bone cancer
• Difficulty swallowing and/or heartburn with esophageal cancer
• Headache, seizures, muscle weakness and/or nausea and vomiting with brain cancers
• Etc.

Finally, many cancers can present with what are called "systemic" symptoms, which are symptoms that affect the patient as a whole, not just the local area around the tumor. For example, some patients with lymphoma, a tumor of white blood cells, can present with fever. Likewise, many cancers can cause anorexia (decreased appetite) and lead to a wasting syndrome which causes weight loss and atrophy of the muscles. These types of generalized, systemic cancer symptoms can present with or without accompanying local symptoms.

Some examples of systemic signs and symptoms of various cancers include:

• Unexplained weight loss
• Generalized fatigue
• Fever
• Anemia
• Anorexia
• Etc.

Unfortunately, many of the symptoms of cancer are not specific to cancer. This means that the symptoms can be caused by other things besides cancer. For example, while headache is a common symptom of brain tumors, there are many other much more common reasons to experience headache. While brain cancer is relatively rare in the general population, benign headaches (often simply caused by stress, exhaustion and/or dehydration) are very common. Therefore, while many patients with a brain cancer have headache, only a very small percentage of people with headaches actually have cancer as the underlying cause.

In fact, pain of many types is an often misunderstood cancer symptom. The general public often mistakenly assumes that pain is a feature of all cancers. It is not. In fact, most cancerous tumors themselves are not painful at all. For example, most breast cancers present as painless breast lumps and most testicular cancers present as painless lumps in the testical. That being said, some cancers can cause pain. For example, cancers that invade bone can cause pain, such as various forms of bone cancer. Tumors inside the head can cause headache commonly. Tumors that involve other nervous system structures such as nerves or the spinal cord can also cause pain. Therefore, pain is sometimes a local symptom of various cancers, but is not present in many other forms of cancer.

So unfortunately there are few absolute, specific cancer symptoms to look out for. However, if you have new symptoms of any type which are unexplained and you are concerned about you should consult your physician about them. If you are concerned about a specific form of cancer, read up on that specific type and the typical symptoms associated with it.