What does cancer mean: only a solid tumor mass or a systemic disease?
Hematologic malignancies have been known for a long time to disseminate cancer cells into the blood stream. Theses cells are used for disease monitoring in blood and in bone marrow. Disseminated cancer cells also serve diagnostic purposes in lymphomas. Identification of such cells is achieved through molecular analysis, e.g. gene translocation, gene rearrangement or others. Solid tumors are by far the largest portion of malignancies. The rate of distant metastases formation is quite considerable in spite or all progress obtained by an increasing number of drugs. The TNM classification is the link among oncologists worldwide for understanding the disease. This view, however, does not take into consideration the dynamics of the disease because its merits is restricted to a single point analysis making individual prognosis over a life span impossible. Decades of experience with the TNM system have generated a body of statistical data which in spite of its volume- can hardly predict indivi
