Gastrointestinal cancer (cancer of the digestive system) includes cancers of the esophagus, gallbladder, liver, pancreas, stomach, small intestine, large intestine (colon) and
rectum.At its heart, cancer is the result of uncontrolled cell growth. Our bodies are composed of trillions of cells, all working together. In cancer, one of those cells stops paying
attention to the normal signals that tell cells to grow, stop growing or even to die. Cancer cells still share many of the same needs and properties of normal cells but they become
independent of the controls that make our body function smoothly.
The process by which a normal cell changes into one that behaves so abnornally can take a long time and is often triggered by outside influences.(1)The next few sections describe the
differences between normal and cancer cells and outline the steps leading to the creation of a cancer cell from a normal cell.
but also with surgical faculty from the Division of Abdominal Transplantation. Many GI cancer patients require multidisciplinary treatments.
