Cancer is described as when there is an abnormal excessive development of any tissue. So does or will cancer affect the foot? Certainly it will, as the foot has all the same tissues as other regions of the body. Cancer in the foot is very unusual, however when it does happen it has the potential to be very serious as it is frequently overlooked or wrongly diagnosed as somethng not so critical. There's two forms of cancer that might impact the foot. One is where the cancer starts in the foot, so this can be in the any tissue from the skin to the bone to joint or the ligaments to the nerves or the blood vessels. Since the foot is a weight-bearing part of the body and it has a lot of things that might go wrong a very high index of suspicion is needed to identify one of these primary cancers from what could be considered a regular and frequent foot condition. That is why the experience of a good experienced clinician is required to take care of foot ailments and to exclude one of these more probably serious disorders that are uncommon.

The other type of cacner that could affect the foot is a metastasis or a spread of the cancer from another part of the body. This cancer may perhaps be already be diagnosed and can spread to the foot where it creates pain in the foot. On the other hand the cancer may start developing in a different organ in 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 can happen it is quite serious because it normally means that the original cancer is more developed. It also creates a diagnostic problem for the clinician who is attempting to diagnose the reason for the pain in the foot. Again, a very high index of suspicion and instinct is needed by the clinician to pick this up in the first stages. The quicker that these types of cancers are clinically determined the better the end result is likely to be.

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