Blood and Lymphatic System Terms

A cancer of the blood or bone marrow, such as leukemia or lymphoma.

The specialist called when a routine blood count stops making sense, whether the answer turns out to be cancer or not.

A bruise stains the tissue, while a hematoma occupies space, and the trouble it causes comes mostly from what it presses on.

Every red cell, white cell and platelet traces back to one kind of stem cell, replaced constantly because none of them last.

A group of proteins that causes blood cells to grow and mature.

Tissue in which new blood cells are formed.

A drug used in photodynamic therapy that is absorbed by tumor cells.

Hemophagocytic lymphohistiocytosis is a rare, life-threatening syndrome of overwhelming immune activation that damages organs and destroys blood cells.

The vein that carries everything absorbed from the gut straight to the liver before the rest of the body sees it.

A type of herpesvirus that may cause Kaposi sarcoma (a rare cancer that can cause skin lesions) and a type of lymphoma (cancer that begins in the lymph system), especially in patients who have a…

Nothing is usually felt, so damage to the vessels of the eyes, kidneys and brain accumulates long before anything announces it.

More glucose circulating than the body can move into its cells, a state with several causes besides diabetes.

An intensive drug treatment to kill cancer cells, but that also destroys the bone marrow and can cause other severe side effects.

A type of lymphoma that grows and spreads quickly and has severe symptoms.

An outdated term referring to non-Hodgkin lymphomas made up of large abnormal lymphoid cells.

Hemophagocytic lymphohistiocytosis, abbreviated HLH, is a rare condition of excessive immune activation that damages organs and destroys blood cells.

Painless swelling of a node in the neck is the usual opening, sometimes with drenching night sweats and a fever that comes and goes.

A type of virus that infects T cells (a type of white blood cell) and can cause leukemia and lymphoma.

A type of herpesvirus that may cause Kaposi sarcoma (a rare cancer that can cause skin lesions) and a type of lymphoma (cancer that begins in the lymph system), especially in patients who have a…

One of a group of proteins found on the surface of white blood cells and other cells that play an important part in the body's immune response to foreign substances.