For lumps or new organisms that appear in different parts of the body, we would call them tumors or cancers. The concept of tumor is broader and is divided into benign and malignant.
- Benign tumors are more common and generally not life-threatening to patients, such as subcutaneous lipomas and lobular growths of the breast, and can only be serious if they cause compression in narrow areas such as the skull.
- Malignant tumors, commonly known as cancer, have unrestricted tumor cell proliferation and metastasis in advanced stages of tumors, which can destroy the body’s immune function, tissue function, and organ function, and even lead to death.
Leukemia is a malignant malignancy of the hematological system, a malignant clonal disease of hematopoietic stem cells, with the sixth highest incidence of overall malignancies in all regions of China.
Leukemia cells proliferate and accumulate in the bone marrow and other hematopoietic tissues and infiltrate other non-hematopoietic tissues and organs, while inhibiting normal hematopoietic function. Clinical manifestations include varying degrees of anemia, bleeding, infectious fever, and enlargement of the liver, spleen, lymph nodes, and skeletal pain, which may also manifest as local infiltrates that form masses like tumors. This is why we also commonly refer to leukemia as “blood cancer”.