• Question: What is the most cases of cancer recorded in one person?

    Asked by anon-327582 on 29 Jun 2022.
    • Photo: Sophie Richardson

      Sophie Richardson answered on 21 Jun 2022:

      Hi Bethan, I had no idea until I searched this up now! I don’t know if this is the most cases of cancer recorded ever, but there is a report saying one woman had five types of cancer at once (https://www.karger.com/Article/Fulltext/440799).

    • Photo: Jocelyn Bisson

      Jocelyn Bisson answered on 22 Jun 2022:

      Yes, I’m not sure on this one. However, sadly having more than one type of cancer in a lifetime happens relatively often; this can be due to genetic changes leading to multiple cancers or the treatment itself (such as radiotherapy) causing damage to DNA and leading to new cancers later on. Luckily our new treatments are more targeted and so this is less of a problem now than it used to be.

    • Photo: Karin Purshouse

      Karin Purshouse answered on 22 Jun 2022:

      I am fascinated by the link in Sophie’s answer – that was an unlucky person.

      The main thing is that most of the time, someone will have had a cancer that has spread to multiple places, but we still call it a cancer of wherever it started. So if a lung cancer spreads to the lungs, liver and brain, it’s still lung cancer – we just call it metastatic lung cancer. This is true even if the original cancer is removed and it comes back in one of these other places later on. It’s very, very unusual to have more than one type of cancer at once.

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