What Is Benign Cancer?

Video Transcript

"Hi! I'm Dr. Kenneth Fink. I'm a medical oncologist at Zimmer Cancer Center in Wilmington, North Carolina New Hanover Regional Medical Center. Benign cancer is a term that's not very well-accepted. We use a term benign to mean it's not malignant and we use a term cancer to mean it is malignant. To say benign cancer implies that some folks are worried that they have some lesion or some lump or some bump or something in their body that they're concerned about. They go to see a doctor and perhaps it's looked at and the doctor maybe puzzled and not quite sure what it is. He'll often, the doctor here, she may often have the patient go see a surgeon or have somebody actually the lump or bump and we'll have it looked at. Now, a pathologist takes this tissue and looks at and the pathologist is the one to tell the doctor whether this particular lump, bump or tumor has been removed has features of malignancy or not. When it has a feature of malignancy, it's growing rapidly and it has, it shows signs of unusual look to it that doesn't look normal. A benign tumor will have a more normal look to it, it won't be growing very fast, the pathologist, the person looking at under the microscope can really tell that that's what it is. There are several benign tumors of the body that can occur. People can get cysts on their arms and their back and various places like that and they , folks often worry about that but quite often those turn out to be benign. Sometimes, we just keep an eye on them and if they're not growing then we, then we really don't take that any further ado, any surgery or any other particular treatment, just really observe it. There are some lesions that are more concerning, we'll have them removed. There maybe some skin lesions that look a little bit unusual, they maybe darkly pigmented for example and we 'll have a dermatologist remove those but quite often they turn out not to be malignant and the patient who's having that problem can be reassured that things are going to be alright. So, in general, benign cancers they're out there and we do show some concern for them but in general they turn out to be quite easy to distinguish from malignant."