How can a cancer affect the foot?

Cancer is defined as should there be an abnormal excessive development of any kind of tissue. So does or could cancer impact the foot? Obviously it will, as the foot has all the same tissues as other areas of the body. Cancer in the foot is very uncommon, but when it does occur it has got the potential to be much more severe because it is frequently missed or misdiagnosed as a condition not too critical. There's two forms of cancer that might affect the foot. The first is where the cancer starts 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. As the foot is a weight-bearing area of the body and it has a lot of things that can go wrong a really high index of suspicion is required to differentiate one of these primary cancers from what might be considered a regular and common foot condition. For this reason the experience of a good skilled clinician is needed to handle foot ailments and to exclude one of these more sometimes serious ailments that are unusual.

The other kind of cancer that can affect the foot is a metastasis or a spread of the cancer coming from another area of the body. This cancer may well be already be recognized and can spread to the foot where it creates pain in the foot. Alternatively the cancer may start growing in another part of the body and it is un-diagnosed there and it sends a metastasis or spreads to the foot and results in pain in the foot. This is extremely uncommon but when it does occur it is extremely serious because it typically implies that the initial cancer is well established. It also presents a diagnostic predicament for the clinician that is wanting to diagnose the real reason for the pain in the foot. Again, a very high index of suspicion and intuition is needed by the clinician to pick this up in the early stages. The earlier that these forms of cancers are clinically determined the better the outcome may very well be.