Cancer is described as when there is an abnormal excessive development of any kind of tissue. So does or will cancer affect the foot? Of course it does, as the foot has all the same tissues as other parts of the body. Cancer in the foot is rather infrequent, however when it does happen it has got the potential to be much more severe as it is often overlooked or wrongly diagnosed as somethng not so serious. There's two kinds of cancer that can impact the foot. One is where the cancer arises in the foot, so this could possibly be in the any tissue from the skin to the bone to joint or the tendons to the nerves or the blood vessels. As the foot is a weight-bearing area of the body and has numerous things which may go wrong a really high index of suspicion is required to identify one of these primary cancers from what could be considered a regular and frequent foot problem. This is the reason the experience of a good skilled clinician is necessary to handle foot ailments and to exclude one of these more sometimes serious disorders that are uncommon.
The other type of cancer that could affect the foot is a metastasis or a spread of the cancer coming from a different area of the body. This cancer could be already be identified and can spread to the foot where it causes pain in the foot. Alternatively the cancer may begin growing in another area of the body and it is un-diagnosed there and it sends a metastasis or propagates to the foot to result in pain in the foot. This is extremely uncommon but when it does happen it is quite serious because it generally signifies that the original cancer is well established. It also poses a diagnostic problem for the clinician that is seeking to identify the reason behind the pain in the foot. Again, a really high index of suspicion and intuition is necessary by the clinician to pick this up in the early stages. The quicker that these forms of cancers are identified the better the end result may very well be.