In clinical work, whether and when a patient develops metastasis varies from person to person and from disease to disease.
Pathologically, metastasis is actually a fundamental characteristic of tumor cells, and the degree of active metastasis is closely related to the size, nature, and growth time of the tumor. Because each patient has a different type of tumor and degree of surgical resection, which directly affects how active the cancer cells are, the timing of metastasis in postoperative patients varies greatly; some patients develop tumor metastasis not long after surgery, but others do not metastasize for many years after surgery, and the exact timing of metastasis is not certain.