The challenge of metastatic, poorly differentiated, and undifferentiated tumors

Metastatic, undifferentiated, or poorly differentiated tumors are among the most frustrating for physicians.¹ These challenging tumors place a disproportionate burden on patients, health care professionals, and the healthcare system. Existing diagnostic technologies such as immunohistochemistry (IHC) and imaging do not provide the certainty that physicians need:

• Multiple rounds of tests are complex, time-consuming, and costly.
• IHC results depend on subjective visual evaluation and may differ between laboratories.
• Results are often not definitive, identifying tumor origins only 20% to 25% of the time following an inconclusive initial workup.² 

These diagnoses can cause frustration for everyone on the treatment team and can also cause stress for patients and their families. When the tumor's tissue of origin cannot be identified without additional expensive and equivocal tests, patients may not receive standard-of-care treatments. 

For the health care system in general, the cost to identify the primary tumor site can be significant, since traditional approaches involve multiple diagnostic technologies that are often run more than once.

Find out why knowing the tissue of origin is important to improving outcomes.

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