What causes bone metastasis?
Bone metastasis (bone mets) can only occur if you already have cancer somewhere else. Some people with cancer get bone mets and others do not. Doctors still don’t know enough to predict who will have bone mets over time. But they do know that certain kinds of cancer (breast, prostate, lung, thyroid, and kidney) are more likely to spread to bones. Among people with the same kind of cancer, tumors that are larger and have already spread to lymph nodes are more likely to spread to bone. For some kinds of cancer, a high grade (this means the cancer cells look very different from normal cells under a microscope) and certain gene changes make the cancer cells more likely to spread to bones. Having a cancer that is found after it has spread to other organs raises your risk of bone mets. Finding cancer early can mean that it has not yet had a chance to spread. This can give you a better chance of successful treatment and a lower risk of future spread.
