Today, we are so focused on treating diseases, cancer as a grand example, that we don't get a good idea of the natural cource of the disease.
We all see unfortunate cases of cancer patiens who have terminal metastatic disease at diagnosis but they may have a very aggressive disease to begin with.
I would much appreciate references to publications concerning the cource of untreated cancers, metastatic patterns, prognosis etc.
I was able to find some papers on breast cancer and high quality studies on prostate cancer, but I trust the community could yield much larger body of literature.
Thank you in advance!
The Bloom database is quite famous. It reports the natural history of untreated breast cancer. The database shows an unimodal surge of death that appeares to delay around 1.5 years, with respect to the first peak of relapse in series of operated patients. To explain this paradox some considered the hypothesis of an angiogenic switch following surgery... Quite interesting!
Bloom, H.J.; Richardson, W.W.; Harries, E.J. Natural history of untreated breast cancer (1805-1933). BMJ 1962, 2, 213–221.
Natural course of cancer.
1. Normal tissue > initiated cell > "in situ'' lesion> benign neoplasm>malignant neoplasm.
2. Euploid cell population>increasing aneuploidy.
3.Initiation>promotion>progression> invasion metastasis.
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