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An anatomical way in. Pick where the cancer is to reach its page, or flip the switch to see where each imaging, ablation, radiation, and surgical technology is used. Blood, lymph, skin, bone, and neuroendocrine cancers are system-wide and drawn as side boxes.
Tap an organ to see what arises or applies there. The viewer's left is the patient's right.
Hover or tap an organ. The figure is drawn to the eight-head canon with organs in their anatomical positions; the viewer's left is the patient's right, so the liver sits on the left of the drawing.
Switch to , or pick female or male to change the pelvis.
Where a cancer usually travels decides which scans are done at staging and in follow-up, and which new symptoms matter. Pick a cancer to see its common metastatic sites drawn on the same figure, ranked by how often they are involved.
What helpsResection or ablation of limited liver and lung metastases can still cure; chemotherapy with EGFR or VEGF antibodies, encorafenib-cetuximab for BRAF, immunotherapy for dMMR disease, KRAS G12C and HER2 combinations.
Most people reading this do not have advanced disease. The map describes what can happen over the whole course of the illness, across autopsy and registry series; today's staging scans find spread earlier, and each site has treatments, from focused radiotherapy for a few spots to drugs that reach the brain.
Portal venous drainage sends colon cancer to the liver first; resectable liver metastases can be cured.
Rectal cancers reach the lung more often than colon cancers (systemic venous drainage).
Commoner in right-sided and mucinous tumours.
Sources: 123 · Tiers summarise autopsy and registry series; numbers are quoted only where a source states them.