Cervical Cancer May Not Be Detected In The Very Early Stages
What is Cervical Cancer?
Cervical cancer is a cancer that forms in the cervix region. The cervix is the lower part belonging to the uterus that opens out into the vaginal area. It is directly caused from the abnormal growth of cells that have the power to grow and spread throughout the human body.
Cervical cancer that is developed early on may not be detected, as it may not display, any signs or symptoms in the beginning. Signs and symptoms of cervical cancer appearing and not appearing are dependent on each patient and their overall condition.
How Do You Get Cervical Cancer?
The cause of cervical cancer is due to the presence of the Human papillomavirus or HPV for short. The HPV virus infection that does seem to be involved in almost all of the 90% of reported cervical cancer cases.
However, despite this fact, there are a good many people who get the HPV infection that don’t end up developing cervical cancer on the average. Some of the other risk factors that can lead to the development of cervical cancer do include smoking, taking birth control pills, an immune system that is weak, lovemaking at a much younger age, and having various partners as well. Multiple pregnancies can also encourage cervical cancer to happen.
However, cervical cancer does mainly develop due to precancerous changes that do take place over a period of 10 to 20 years in length. There are HPV vaccines that can help to protect against women developing between two and seven of the high-risk strains of this family of viruses and may prevent up to 90% of cervical cancers from occurring.
Genital Warts and Cervical Cancer
Overall, there is more than 100 types of the HPV virus, and because of this fact. There are about 30 or more types of these viruses that can cause genital infections. There are also some that can cause genital warts. Others can even cause cervical or other forms of genital cancers.
About 70 of the other HPV types can cause infections and warts on other parts of the body such as on an individual’s hands for example. The HPV viruses specifically which do cause genital warts are the HPV 6 and HPV 11 specifically. The genital warts that are produced by these two viruses are very rarely associated with cervical cancer. They are what is known as being low-risk HPV. There are certain HPV types that can be classified as being high risk.
These types of HPV are what do lead to abnormal cell changes happening and can cause genital cancers. The HPV virus types that are very high risk and can lead to cervical cancer, as well as, to cancers of the vulva and the anus are HPV 16 and 18. These two high risk forms of HPV do lead to development of about 70% of all cervical cancers.
Signs and Symptoms of Cervical Cancer
Cervical cancer that is early on may not have any visible signs or symptoms at all. However, if cervical cancer is advanced in progression, the signs and symptoms can be any of the following that are listed here. These signs and symptoms may vary greatly from patient to patient. Therefore, where one person may have one symptoms, another one may not. The most common signs and symptoms are as follows:
- Bleeding after lovemaking
- Bleeding and spotting in between periods
- Bleeding after douching or having a pelvic exam done
- Heavy abnormal vaginal bleeding that was happening before
- Pain during lovemaking
- Any form of unusual discharge coming from the inside. This discharge may contain blood and be between periods or after menopause has taken place
- Weight loss
- Pelvic pain
- Back pain
- Leg pain
References: Cancer.org | CDC | WebMD | Wikipedia |