Functional Units & Tumours
“I think, therefore I am”
– Descartes –
You will remember meeting one system for approaching tumours in the sieve. There we learnt to think of all tumours as either benign or malignant – and if malignant, as either primary (including in-situ tumours) or secondary.
We can expand this system of tumours further with the power of the functional unit. First we fashion a functional unit of the organ in question, containing all the tissues specific to that organ. Then we use our sieve to build a list of possible tumours that may arise. Lets use the breast as an example…