The Federal Government has underscored the importance of early cancer detection, saying the stage at which the disease is diagnosed determines the treatment approach and chances of cure.
National Coordinator, National Cancer Control Plan (NCCP), Federal Ministry of Health and Social Welfare,Dr Uchechukwu NwokwuUchechukwu Nwokwu, said this in an interview with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) on Sunday in Abuja.
Nwokwu also explained how cancer progressed through four stages, adding that it was not a single disease but a group of diseases that could affect different organs and behave differently depending on the type of cancer and the cells from which it originated.
According to him, cancer begins when abnormal cells develop within a particular organ or body system, with the extent to which the disease has spread determining its stage.
He said Stage One cancer referred to a disease that remained within the area where it originated and had not spread beyond that location.
“When the cancer may arise from a small cell inside the organ of a particular system of the body, and as long as it is within the area it originated is an early stage, stage one,” he said.
Nwokwu said Stage Two occurred when the cancer had moved beyond its original area but remained confined within the affected organ.
He explained that Stage Three was reached when the disease had grown beyond the affected organ but remained within the same body system or surrounding region.
“For example, if a breast cancer is growing beyond the breast and affects the chest wall which is hosting the breast, that’s Stage Three,” he said.
The coordinator said Stage Four was the most advanced stage, occurring when the cancer had spread from the original organ to other systems or distant parts of the body.
He said such spread was known as metastasis.
“So when it leaves the whole of where it’s growing, it’s a different system, we call it metastasis. That’s stage four,” he said.
Nwokwu explained that breast cancer, for instance, could spread to the brain, bones, liver or lungs, with tests showing that a tumour in those locations originated from the breast.
He said Stage Four cancer was particularly difficult to manage because treatment was no longer focused solely on the original organ.
“So that means you can see breast cancer affecting some in the brain. You can see a tumour in the brain that’s actually from breast,” he said.
Nwokwu said the stage at which cancer was detected had significant implications for treatment and the possibility of achieving a cure.
He explained that some stage one cancers could potentially be cured through surgery alone because the disease remained confined to where it originated.
“If you have somebody who has a breast cancer in stage one, like I said, it’s still within where it started from.
“You might just cut off that place and do a surgery that can just take small part of the normal tissue where it has not affected and with that surgery alone, the person is completely cured of that cancer,” he said.
According to him, surgery can also be effective for some stage two cancers because the disease remains confined to the organ.
He said stage two and stage three cancers could, however, require combinations of treatment, including surgery, chemotherapy and radiotherapy.
Nwokwu explained that doctors could also use what is known as neoadjuvant or adjuvant therapy alongside surgery, depending on the patient’s condition.
He said targeted therapy was another treatment option for cancers driven by particular hormones or biological mechanisms.
The coordinator cited prostate cancer as an example, explaining that some patients could undergo removal of the testes to reduce testosterone, a hormone that could stimulate the growth of prostate cancer.
He noted, however, that some advanced prostate cancers could become resistant to this approach, a condition known as castration-resistant prostate cancer, requiring other medicines to control disease progression.
Nwokwu said treatment of stage four cancer was more complex because the disease could involve several parts of the body.
He explained that chemotherapy could be useful in some circumstances because it was a systemic treatment capable of reaching cancer cells in different parts of the body.
He, however, said that radiotherapy had to be applied more selectively depending on where the cancer had spread and the patient’s overall condition.
Nwokwu emphasised that the differences in treatment across the stages reinforced the importance of detecting cancer early, before it spread beyond the organ where it originated.
He said early diagnosis allowed doctors to determine the stage of the disease and select the most appropriate combination of treatment modalities.
The coordinator also emphasised that cancer treatment should be individualised because cancers affecting the same organ could behave differently depending on their biological characteristics.
He urged Nigerians to seek medical attention promptly when they noticed unusual symptoms and to follow appropriate screening and diagnostic recommendations to improve the chances of detecting cancer at an early stage.
