Talk:Benign tumor

"Premalignant" tumours may be "benign" - self-contradiction with definition of "benign"

The section discussing premalignant tumours says that "tumors may be benign but at risk for degeneration into malignancy". This contradicts the definition of benign given earlier.

Since "benign" was defined as "...which, untreated or with symptomatic therapy, will not become life-threatening", a premalignant tumour is not one which can be left untreated, therefore no premalignant tumour can ever be "benign", unless the definition of benign is amended in some way to talk about immediacy.

It may be that article correctly describes the actual current usage of these terms, which may possibly be rather imprecise. I don't know. User:CecilWard

I agree with you. There is quite a contradiction here. I think the sentence which includes "untreated or with symptomatic therapy, will not become life-threatening" needs to be reworded. There is an emphasis made in the article that the terms "malignant" and "benign" refer to the behaviour of the tumour. It would seem to me that scientists have yet to be able to differentiate between tissue which is benign, and tissue which acts benign but has the ability to become malignant. For that reason, a another definition for potentionally-malignant benign tissue needs to be made. These are just my thoughts, I would like to ask an oncologist about this. User:bradsmith281

I am studying breast cancer, however I am not myself an oncologist or a pathologist. Benign and malignant in oncology refers the biological meaning of the word: what the pathologist sees under his microscope. As I am not a pathologist, I'll just describe it here as I know it, but in short the pathologist decides after looking at representative slices of the tumor under his microscope. As I remember it: a benign tumor shows an abundancy of cells of a certain cell type (otherwise there wouldn't be a tumor; it does mean that there are certain cells that divide rapidly and grow into a larger mass). However, in a benign tumor, the cells still look very much like the cells they originate from, while in a malignant tumor, the cells have changed their looks. Also in benign tumors, cells don't invade into other tissues or pass the basal layer (in benign skin tumors for example); in other words, they are not capable of invasion into other parts of the body.

• However, a benign tumor can be malignant-in-its-behaviour when it sits in a location where its grow could cause problems (for example near the heart or in the brain) and when the benign tumor cannot be removed easily by surgery.
• And, however: a benign tumor sometimes (depending on the kind of tumor or kind of tissue it originates from) can become malignant. The pathologist under his microscope will see a perfectly benign pattern; but since he and the other doctors know that this kind of tumor can become malignant when left alone for enough time, that tumor could also be qualified as pre-malignant. This for example happens with polyps of the intestine, and moles (that can turn into melanomas).
• Malignant tumor formation is actually most of the times a gradual proces, from completely benign to completely malignant. However, as I already mentioned before, the chances of some benign lesion becoming malignant depend on the kind of tissue the tumor comes from; and most of the times the pathologist can give a good answer to the question: is this tumor entirely benign OR are there some, or more regions of the tumor that are malignant and worrying. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Huijts (talk • contribs) 08:13, 22 April 2007 (UTC).

Tumours are able to be classified as benign/malignant based on their histological characteristics - cellular pleomorphism, nuclear pleomorphism, hyperchromic nuclei, increased nucleus:cytoplasm ratio, increased mitosis and the presence of tumour giant cells tend to be seen in malignant cell masses. Metastasis is a defining feature of malignancy, though invasion is very common. To call a cancer benign simply means it lacks malignant characteristics; not that it is not dangerous. Gliomas are a good example (benign brain cancers - compress the brain against the skull). Correspondingly, some malignancies aren't too dangerous, at least relative to some of the nastier benign lesions. Rieux2013 (talk) 02:38, 30 May 2010 (UTC)

This is a process known as malignant degeneration in which a previously benign lesion by process of de novo mutation has gained the ability to invade and/or metastasize. TaylorM05 (talk) 17:19, 8 June 2014 (UTC)

References

Requested move

The following discussion is an archived discussion of the proposal. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

I propose we move the content of this page to benign tumor (currently a redirect) and make this a disambiguation page. Lots of things can be described as "benign" that have nothing to do with the content on this page, and by formalizing the de facto subject of this page (benign tumors) in the title, it will be possible to structure it better. Right now, the page is confusingly written, as the authors struggled over two meanings of the word "benign". An alternative would be to use the even more specific title benign neoplasm, but that might be too technical for wikipedia, and a discussion of benign tumors that are not neoplasms would be an interesting addition. -Rustavo^{Talk/Contribs} 03:02, 5 June 2007 (UTC)

• Support move to Benign tumor, but I don't see any need for a disambiguation page at this time. The dictionary definition doesn't need to be linked, so that wouldn't be a justification for it. Dekimasuよ! 03:16, 5 June 2007 (UTC)

Hmm... yeah, I though about just leaving this a redirect, but it does seem like a lot of people have wikilinked to this page because they want an explanation of the medical term "benign" as in "not hazardous to the health". Also there are some pages that the redirect could link to (e.g. benign intracranial hypertension, benign neglect). I'm concerned that the page will quickly be recreated in a disorganized way if it's left as a redirect, but I don't have really strong feelings either way. I just made similar changes to the page malignant, which is to cancer what benign is to benign tumor. -Rustavo^{Talk/Contribs} 05:48, 5 June 2007 (UTC)

In that case, a straight delete of the resulting redirect through AfD might be the best thing to do. A dab page isn't needed unless a benign tumor or benign neglect is often referred to as simply "a benign" or "benign" without further clarification, and that's clearly not the case. Dekimasuよ! 02:34, 7 June 2007 (UTC)

No, I'd say clearly it is the case that the word "benign" is often used and wikilinked in isolation. There are about 200 pages that link to this one, and only 14 of them are redirected via benign tumor. The majority of those pages are using the term in reference to tumors, but many are not, e.g. Infectious_disease, Psychology_of_torture, Spiritual_possession, and Freeganism to take the first few near the top of the list (OK, some of those examples are odd, but trust me, there are lots of legit medical articles that link to this page and have nothing to do with tumors). One of the strengths of Wikipedia as a forum for writing about medicine for public consumption is that you don't have to spend a lot of space defining potentially unfamililar terms - you can just wikilink to them - and that's what people seem to be doing with "benign" (and "malignant" as well - please see what I did with that page as an example of what I want to do with "benign".) -Rustavo^{Talk/Contribs} 04:24, 8 June 2007 (UTC)

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the proposal. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

This article has been renamed from benign to benign tumor as the result of a move request. --Stemonitis 10:04, 10 June 2007 (UTC)

I had a mole removed

I had a rather large mole removed that was on my chest, the color of it was not concerning to the Doctor, but the size was for me so I had it removed. The biopsy word they used in the letter they sent me was { the results have come back are Benign? ok so my question is was does that mean the word { Benign}? Please help — Preceding unsigned comment added by 96.255.145.29 (talk) 03:38, 27 June 2012 (UTC)

Removed sentence

I removed the sentence "The term "benign" implies a mild and nonprogressive disease." because, in regards to benign tumours, it does not mean nonprogessive disease. In fact many benign tumours will progress to malignancy. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Simoncaulton (talk • contribs) 21:19, 24 March 2013 (UTC)

I have also removed the sentence " Some types, such as teratoma, are notorious for cancer progression." because I couldnt find any references pointing out that teratomas were particularly prone to malignant progression.

Feel free to put it back in with a reference.Simon Caulton (talk) 15:44, 31 March 2013 (UTC)

Article image

The image used in this article is a strange choice - it is labeled as "Normal Epidermis and Dermis with Intradermal Nevus 10x-cropped," but the benign process in that original image (available here), the intradermal nevus, has been cropped out. As such, the portion shown is just normal skin. The caption could be changed to "Normal epidermis and dermis," but that doesn't help the fact that this article is supposed to focus on benign tumours. Mkubica (talk) 20:31, 5 September 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for that, I am not an expert in histology so I trusted the description. Would this image be any better? Thanks Simon Caulton (talk) 09:57, 6 September 2013 (UTC)

Sorry I see you sent me the link to the whole image so I will put that in. Simon Caulton (talk) 10:00, 6 September 2013 (UTC)

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Mechanism

The Mechanism section does not contain any description of an actual mechanism to cause a tumor to be malignant vs benign. It simply states that benign tumors do not spread. If someone could add a section about the actual mechanism, it would fulfill the purpose of the section better. 2605:A601:A918:9600:CB2:8B50:A130:4C9B (talk) 16:42, 8 March 2023 (UTC)

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