• Question: what is the rarest form of cancer?

    Asked by paige to Kylie, Matt, Bex, RobB, Sam on 13 Jun 2016.
    • Photo: Kylie Belchamber

      Kylie Belchamber answered on 13 Jun 2016:

      Hi Paige,
      This is a hard question! There are lots of rare cancers. I think heart cancer might be the answer though! Cancer happens when a cell divides to make a new cell. During this process, the DNA gets copied, and if an error happens in this copying process, it can make a new cell that cannot stop dividing, and making a cancerous tumor. The muscle cells that make up the heart don’t divide, they stay the same throughout your life, unless they are damaged by a heart attack or something. This means that they are unlikely to form a cancer.
      Heart cancer can happen, but very rarely. Historians think that one of Henry VIIIs wives, Catherine of Aragon died of heart cancer!

    • Photo: Rob Brass

      Rob Brass answered on 13 Jun 2016:

      Hi Paige,

      As Kylie said there are lots and lots of different types of cancer! I’d also agree that heart cancer is among the rarest, I’ve definitely never treated a heart patient!

      If you google ‘rarest cancer’ however you’ll find a few newspaper articles all with headlines like “I beat worlds rarest cancer” but they’re all talking about different things! Because cancers can classified by so many factors (type, location, whether in a child or an adult) you can get very specific types with fairly low numbers in each.

    • Photo: Matt Dunn

      Matt Dunn answered on 13 Jun 2016:

      Hi Paige,

      There are many types of cancer, basically any cell that grows uncontrollably could be called a cancer, and because your whole body is made of cells, that is a lot of potential cancer!

      Statistically, one of the rarest I know of is a type of urinary system cancer, which affects around 18 people per 100,000 (but only if you look at people living in Europe)

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