COLUMBUS — Most reports about the death of Wendy's Restaurants founder Dave Thomas last week said he died of liver cancer. However, he actually had a more unfamiliar form of cancer — a carcinoid tumor, which is rare, difficult to diagnose and complicated to treat.

        Carcinoid tumors form for unknown reasons, most often starting in the gastrointestinal tract. The tumors release hormones into the bloodstream, where they flow directly to the liver.

        Signs of the insidious disease generally don't show up unless it spreads to the liver. Hormones secreted there produce carcinoid syndrome, a cluster of symptoms including an uncomfortable flushing of the head and neck, diarrhea, cramping and asthma-like wheezing.

        Fewer than 10 percent of those with carcinoid disease develop carcinoid syndrome.

        Once the disease spreads to the liver, it becomes most dangerous.

        “That's the one that takes patients' lives if it becomes end-stage and progressive,” Dr. Manisha Shah of the Arthur G. James Cancer Hospital told the Columbus Dispatch in a story published Saturday.

        Still, the tumors grow so slowly that people can survive for a decade or longer.

        “Some patients in my clinic have had carcinoid in the liver since the 1970s,” said Dr. Shah, who treats about 130 carcinoid patients.

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