Metastasis is the process in which cancer cells spread from the original tumor to other parts of the body. These traveling cells form new tumors that can be harder to treat.
From Greek ‘metastasis,’ meaning ‘removal’ or ‘change of place,’ from ‘meta-’ (change) and ‘histanai’ (to place or set). In medicine, it came to mean the shifting of disease from one place to another.
The word literally means a ‘change of place,’ which is exactly what makes metastatic cancer so dangerous—the disease doesn’t stay put. Doctors often treat the original cancer and all its metastases as one disease, no matter where they show up.
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