indolent
Meaning of indolent: A word meaning painless that drifted into meaning slow, and a label promising more comfort than it can deliver.
Definition of indolent
Indolent describes a disease that develops slowly and causes few symptoms, applied most often to cancers that may sit almost unchanged for years. It says nothing about whether the condition can be cured. In its original sense the word meant painless, and it is still used that way for sores and ulcers that neither hurt nor heal.
Does slow-growing mean less serious?
Not reliably, and that is the trap inside the word. Speed of growth and curability pull in opposite directions among the lymphomas. Aggressive types divide fast, which leaves them vulnerable to treatments that strike dividing cells, and a substantial share of them are cured outright. Indolent types divide slowly, resist those same treatments, respond well at first and then return, so people live with them for many years without the disease ever being eliminated. Slow therefore buys time rather than safety, and living long with a condition is not the same as being rid of it. Most of the slow-growing types belong to the non-Hodgkin lymphoma group.
Where is the word used?
| Setting | What it describes |
|---|---|
| Indolent lymphoma | Follicular and marginal zone types, growing across years |
| Low-risk prostate cancer | Disease unlikely to cause harm within a lifetime |
| Indolent systemic mastocytosis | A form that does not damage organs |
| Indolent ulcer | A sore that is painless and slow to heal |
What follows from calling a cancer indolent?
Chiefly that treatment may not be needed immediately. Where a slow cancer is causing no symptoms, starting treatment at once has not been shown to lengthen life compared with monitoring and acting when something changes, an approach called watchful waiting or active surveillance. Being followed rather than treated is hard for many people to accept, and it is a deliberate plan rather than the absence of one. The second consequence is vigilance for change, since indolent lymphoma can transform into an aggressive form, which alters both the outlook and the treatment. Much the same reasoning governs surveillance in early prostate cancer, where much of what is found would never have surfaced during a lifetime.
Also known as
Used in a sentence
The lymphoma was classified as indolent and managed with observation.
Good to know
Indolent describes the pace of a disease rather than its curability, and among lymphomas the slow-growing types are generally harder to eliminate while the fast-growing types are more often cured.
Word origin
Where “indolent” comes from
From the Latin indolens, joining in-, meaning not, with dolere, to feel pain, so the original sense was painless rather than slow.