Treatment and Supportive Care Terms

A type of therapy in which the whole family talks with a professional counselor to solve family problems.

Initial treatment used to reduce a cancer.

A treatment using gamma rays, a type of high-energy radiation that can be tightly focused on small tumors or other lesions in the head or neck, so very little normal tissue receives radiation.

A chemotherapy combination used to treat malignant mesothelioma, advanced non-small cell lung cancer, advanced bladder cancer, advanced cervical cancer, pancreatic cancer, and epithelial ovarian…

Instead of managing the effects of a faulty gene for a lifetime, the aim is to change the instruction the cell is reading.

A procedure that uses gold salts (a salt form of the metal element gold) to treat diseases, such as rheumatoid arthritis.

An alternative therapy that is being studied as a treatment for pancreatic cancer.

Treatment that helps a person work through a greater than normal reaction to a loss, such as the death of a loved one.

A type of therapy in which radiation is aimed at a tumor from many different directions.

A phrase that runs three separate ideas together, total amount, delivery speed and number of sessions, which is how its abbreviation misleads.

A type of radiation therapy that uses high-energy photons (units of light energy).

A procedure in which high-energy sound waves are aimed directly at an area of abnormal cells or tissue in the body.

Hormones (estrogen, progesterone, or both) given to women after menopause to replace the hormones no longer produced by the ovaries.

Warming tissue a few degrees above normal to make tumor cells more vulnerable to the treatments given alongside it.

Radiation treatment in which the total dose of radiation is divided into large doses and treatments are given less than once a day.

A procedure that uses a computer to create a picture of a tumor to help guide the radiation beam during radiation therapy.

Therapy used to decrease the body's immune responses, such as drugs given to prevent transplant rejection.

Rather than attacking a disease directly, these treatments change what the immune system is willing to attack, or willing to tolerate.

A type of radiation therapy in which radioactive material sealed in needles, seeds, wires, or catheters is placed directly into or near a tumor.

Radiation shaped to the tumor rather than aimed at a box around it, using beams whose strength varies across their own width.