A tumor is a mass of tissue that originates with different causes, such as trauma. The tumors made of well-differentiated cells grouped together in a single structure are called benign (Norris, 2019). As a general rule, benign tumors do not cause death. The only exception is if their location hurts vital functions from the start. The tumors made of less differentiated cells able to break apart and form other tumors at different places of the body are called malignant (Norris, 2019). Thus, benign and malignant tumors are different in their cell structure, ability to invade other parts of the body, and their difference in lethality.
The two contrasting kinds of tumor have other differences as well. Benign cells, besides being well-differentiated, resemble the cells in the tissue of origin, while malignant do not (Norris, 2019). Malignant tumors have a variable rate of growth, while benign are always slow and sometimes regress (Norris, 2019). Benign tumor grows without invading other tissues, as it always keeps a single structure, while malignant tumor does invade. Finally, benign tumor does not metastasize, while malignant tumor does it via invading blood and lymph channels (Norris, 2019). Therefore, the most dangerous and distinctive quality of malign tumor is its ability to expand, for which its contrasting qualities are convenient.
There are several methods to distinguish malignant and benign tumors when determining diagnosis. For example, conventional MRI and diffusion-weighted imaging depict benign and malignant with different features, including the absence of a split fat sign (Yun et al., 2020). Another possible method is using a Leydig cell tumor scaled score to measure mitotic activity, as a certain value of it is an attribute of malignancy (Colecchia et al., 2020). Thus, recent works show that development of further measures against malignant tumors brings results.
References
Colecchia, M., Bertolotti, A., Paolini, B., Giunchi, F., Necchi, A., Paganoni, A. M., Ricci, C., Fiorentino, M., & Dagrada, G. P. (2020). The Leydig cell tumour Scaled Score (LeSS): a method to distinguish benign from malignant cases, with additional correlation with MDM2 and CDK4 amplification. Histopathology, 78(2), 290–299.
Norris, T. L. (2019). Porth’s essentials of pathophysiology (5th ed.). LWW.
Yun, J. S., Lee, M. H., Lee, S. M., Lee, J. S., Kim, H. J., Lee, S. J., Chung, H. W., Lee, S. H., & Shin, M. J. (2020). Peripheral nerve sheath tumor: Differentiation of malignant from benign tumors with conventional and diffusion-weighted MRI. European Radiology, 31(3), 1548–1557.