After nearly 40 years of being discovered in the world, the rate of people suffering from this strange disease - sweat gland cancer - has increased by 170%.

Currently, medical researchers have not yet found the cause of this disease.

Vietnam has also recorded a number of cases of patients with sweat gland cancer, treated at the Oncology Hospital. This is a strange disease, few people know about it, so this is also dangerous when many people have the disease without knowing it to have timely treatment.

This is a disease caused by excessive and uncontrolled growth of sweat glands. The danger is that the disease has the ability to invade surrounding tissues and metastasize very quickly to the lymph nodes, damaging any part.

Patients often have lymph node damage in the armpits, neck, etc. This is also the main symptom that causes patients to seek medical examination and treatment. The early stages - when the tumor first appears - are often difficult to detect and diagnose.

Only when there is bleeding or discharge in these places, the symptoms become more obvious. Sweat gland cancer is often difficult to diagnose or misdiagnosed based on clinical findings alone, and must be determined through biopsy samples from tumors or metastatic lymph nodes.

Results from some surveys show that if there are no lymph nodes metastasis or disease in other organs, about 56% of patients can live for about 10 years. If the disease has metastasized to the lymph nodes or invaded other organs in the body, the survival rate is only 9%.

Signs to be suspicious

Clinically, the most common lesions of the disease are in

- Face: 48%

- Trunk area: 17.4%

- Branches: 19%

- Scalp and neck: 14%

According to Dr. Bui Chi Viet, Head of Department of Surgery 2, Ho Chi Minh City Oncology Hospital: The characteristic of sweat gland cancer is that there is no specific image in terms of clinical diagnosis. Usually, it is a manifestation of hard, burning, ulcerated lesions on the skin surface with a red to dark purple color or sometimes appearing in the arms, legs, back, vagina, and around the anus.

This stage is often difficult to detect and diagnose. The tumor grows slowly and then suddenly increases in size, invades the surrounding skin structure, and metastasizes to the bones and lungs. Metastasis to the brain and kidneys is rare. These tumors are often round, hard, discrete or clustered together, and may or may not cause pain.

Most cases of the disease recorded in Vietnam over the past 10 years have something in common: the appearance of tumors in the skin, located on the lower leg, right or left thigh, and shoulder arm.

Why get sick?

This question still has no definite answer. In the world medical literature, there is no mention of favorable factors or specific agents leading to this disease.

Based on some documents and from actual treatment, doctors found that sweat gland cancer originates from structures in the skin appendages, with no specific images to help determine the diagnosis.

Some of the suspected causes of the disease include exposure to ultraviolet rays and immunosuppression in people who are overexposed to the sun. Ultraviolet radiation plays an important role in the pathogenesis.

This is why people with darker skin have a lower incidence of the disease. In addition, some drugs used to treat arthritis and inflammation, if used for a long time, will also contribute to the increased rate of sweat gland cancer.

How to treat?

To diagnose the disease, the doctor will use imaging tools such as ultrasound and X-ray to find metastatic lesions in the liver, lungs or bones - the most common locations of metastasis. Usually, the doctor will use wide surgical excision, along with lymph node treatment when there is metastasis.

However, the possibility of recurrence is quite high, so it is difficult to predict with certainty what will happen next. The method of aspirating cells from tumor tissue or lymph nodes, or surgical biopsy will bring definite histological results.

Surgery to remove the tumor at an early stage, combined with therapy and radiotherapy - considered the most effective treatment regimen - still carries a high risk of death because the possibility of recurrence is 45-59%.

According to Dr. Bui Chi Viet, not only is the entire mass of abnormal tissue removed, but the margins of the specimen must also be carefully examined to determine for sure whether the malignant tissue has actually been removed.

If cancer has metastasized to other important locations in the body, surgery at this stage is only a "firefighting" measure, if not meaningless.

Preventable?

On average, each person has 2.6 million sweat glands. The most sweat is concentrated in the feet. This area has about 250,000 sweat glands, secreting about 0.3 liters of sweat per day.

The way to “save yourself before God saves you” against all diseases is always to practice healthy living and working habits. You should supplement foods rich in vitamins A, D, E, especially C to help increase resistance.

To reduce the risk of developing sweat gland cancer, exercise regularly and limit too much exposure to the sun; reduce radiation absorption by wearing light-colored clothing when going out in the sun.

In addition, it is necessary to avoid factors that cause skin inflammation and pay attention to body hygiene because the skin layer is always being regenerated to ensure excretory function.

Finally, this is a rare disease but does not spare anyone. Therefore, it is necessary to go to the right place with expertise as soon as you see suspicious signs.

According to Alobacsi.com