Cancer and Oncology Terms
Terms used to describe cancer, tumors, cancer testing, and treatment. Browse definitions and meanings below.
What is oncology?
Oncology is the branch of medicine concerned with cancer: preventing it, detecting it, treating it, and following what happens afterward. An oncologist is a doctor who specializes in it, and the field divides further into medical oncology, which uses drugs, radiation oncology, and surgical oncology.
This is the largest collection on the site, because the dictionary grew out of a cancer research vocabulary. Its terms describe what a growth is made of, how far it has travelled, how abnormal its cells look, and how it answers treatment over time.
Terms in this topic
Alphabetical order-
A type of monoclonal antibody used in cancer detection or therapy.
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A substance being studied in the treatment of cancer.
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A staging system for prostate cancer that uses ABCD.
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A substance being studied in the treatment of some types of cancer and other conditions.
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A drug used to treat breast cancer that has spread or that has come back within 6 months after chemotherapy.
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A prostate cancer tablet that shuts down testosterone production everywhere in the body, not only in the testicles.
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Abraxane is a brand name chemotherapy drug that delivers paclitaxel bound to albumin nanoparticles to treat several types of cancer.
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A substance being studied in the treatment of lymphomas and other types of cancer.
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A substance being studied in the treatment of cancer.
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A substance that is being studied in the treatment of cancer.
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A substance being studied in the treatment of several types of cancer.
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Four drugs chosen as much for what they avoid as for what they do, because the disease is usually cured and survivors live decades.
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An abbreviation for a chemotherapy combination used to treat Hodgkin lymphoma.
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An abbreviation for a chemotherapy combination used with radiation therapy to treat low-risk childhood Hodgkin lymphoma.
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An abbreviation for a chemotherapy combination used with radiation therapy to treat low-risk childhood Hodgkin lymphoma.
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An abbreviation for a chemotherapy combination used with radiation therapy to treat low-risk childhood Hodgkin lymphoma.
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A human monoclonal antibody that is being used to treat colorectal cancer that has spread to other parts of the body.
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The same two letters name a shoulder joint, a ventilator mode and a dosing instruction, so the surrounding note decides which AC is meant.
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An abbreviation for a chemotherapy combination used with other types of therapy to treat breast cancer, including breast cancer that has spread or come back.
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AC-T is a sequential chemotherapy regimen for breast cancer that pairs two drugs given together followed by a third drug given afterward.