Reproductive, Pregnancy and Breast Health Terms

A form of estrogen that may have fewer side effects than other forms.

A blood estradiol result means little without knowing where in the cycle, or where in life, the sample was taken.

A combination of the hormone estradiol (an estrogen) and nitrogen mustard (an anticancer drug).

After menopause the ovaries largely stop making it, and fat tissue converting adrenal hormones becomes the main remaining source.

A loose label stretched across two unrelated drug strategies: occupying the receptor, or shutting off the supply of the hormone upstream.

A hormone receptor that works as a gene switch, so blocking it changes what a cell builds rather than merely what it senses.

Describes cells that do not have a protein to which the hormone estrogen will bind.

A result that reads like a label but works as a prediction, since it forecasts which treatments a tumor is likely to answer.

A lab test to find out if cancer cells have estrogen receptors (proteins to which estrogen will bind).

Hormones given to postmenopausal women or to women who have had their ovaries surgically removed.

An area of the body other than the ovaries or testes.

The rarer implantation sites are the difficult ones, being harder to see on a scan and behaving differently from a pregnancy in the tube.

A radiolabeled substance being studied as an imaging agent in breast cancer.

A substance being studied in the prevention of palmar-plantar erythrodysesthesia (pain, swelling, numbness, tingling, or redness of the palms of the hands or soles of the feet) in breast cancer…

A slender tube through which eggs pass from an ovary to the uterus.

Fat necrosis is a benign condition in which damaged fat tissue can form a firm lump that closely mimics cancer on examination and imaging.

A term used in mammography that refers to the replacement of breast tissue with fatty tissue.

FEC is a chemotherapy combination of three drugs given together for breast cancer, including disease that has spread or returned.

A moving state rather than a fixed one, since age, illness, surgery and treatment all shift it in either direction.

Fertility is the biological capacity to conceive, shaped by hormonal balance, reproductive organ function, and the quality of eggs or sperm.