To me a Sarcomatoid Carcinoma (sometimes know as a carcinosarcoma) is a horrible name I wish I never heard! It is aggressive and volatile and does not care where it goes in the body, unlike other cancers it is a mixture of cancers.
This type of cancer is rarely seen, I know I am around case 16 to be seen by the hospital that treats me, I am also the first person with it in my back and left side (left flank).
Most doctors, surgeons and specialists accept that there is really no treatment that works well for it, there is also rarely a prognosis that can be given as no one knows how it will affect the individual. Staging is almost impossible for me, and many others as the aggressive nature of it means it can spread rapidly or may never spread.
Some get lucky and it sways to the carcinoma side which is easier to treat that the sarcoma side, but either way it tends to have a high recurrence rate and tends to lead to a poor prognosis in the long run.
cancer.gov
Cancer.gov explains a sarcomatoid carcinoma as below.
sarcomatoid carcinoma (sar-KOH-muh-toyd KAR-sih-NOH-muh)
A type of cancer that looks like a mixture of carcinoma (cancer that begins in the skin or in tissues that line or cover internal organs in the body) and sarcoma (cancer of the bone, cartilage, fat, muscle, blood vessels, or other connective or supportive tissue). The sarcoma-like cells are often spindle cells. Under a microscope, spindle cells look long and slender.
wikipedia.org
Wikipedia explains it as below.
Sarcomatoid carcinoma is a relatively uncommon form of cancer whose malignant cells have histological, cytological, or molecular properties of both epithelial tumors (“carcinoma”) and mesenchymal tumors (“sarcoma”).
Carcinosarcomas are malignant tumors that consist of a mixture of carcinoma (or epithelial cancer) and sarcoma (or mesenchymal/connective tissue cancer). Carcinosarcomas are rare tumors, and can arise in diverse organs, such as the skin, salivary glands, lungs, the esophagus, pancreas, colon, uterus and ovaries.
Four main hypotheses have been proposed for the cellular origins of carcinosarcoma, based largely on the pathology of the disease. First, the collision tumor hypothesis, which proposes the collision of two independent tumors resulting in a single neoplasm, based on the observation that skin cancers and superficial malignant fibrous histiocytomas are commonly seen in patients with sun-damaged skin; second, the composition hypothesis, which suggests that the mesenchymal component represents a pseudosarcomatous reaction to the epithelial malignancy; third, the combination hypothesis, which suggests that both the epithelial and mesenchymal components of the tumor arise from a common pluripotential stem cell that undergoes divergent differentiation; and fourth, the conversion/divergence hypothesis, which argues that the sarcomatous component of the tumor represents a metaplastic sarcomatous transformation of the epithelial component. Despite the remaining uncertainty on the mechanisms that generate these tumors, recent immunohistochemical, ultrastructural, and molecular genetic studies suggest and favor the notion of monoclonality in carcinosarcoma. In addition, identical p53 and KRAS mutations have been identified in both epithelial and mesenchymal components of carcinosarcoma, findings that suggest an early alteration in the histogenesis of the tumor with late transformation or degeneration of the epithelial component into the sarcomatous component.
It’s Not Easy To Get Info…
This type of cancer is so hard to get information on as very few people have knowledge of it or treating it, so most things become experimental.
