Medical Terminology

To understand Tigers Against Cancer, first one should understand some of the terms used throughout the Web Site...........

   Cancer-   1. a very harmful growth in the body; malignant tumor.   Cancer tends to spread and destroy the healthy tissues and organs of the body.   cancerous is like or having cancer.

Radiotherapy-    1. consists of giving a dose of radiation to cancer cells which will result in their destruction with minimal damage to  surrounding normal tissue.  may cause diarrhea, nausea, tiredness, and vomiting;   symptoms usually diappear with rest and good nutrition.

Bone Scan-   1. radioactive dye is injecteed into the bloodstream; it concentrates where large numbers of cells are clustered and is measured by a scanning machine that maps radioactivity in the body.

Ultrasound-    1. technique used to determine whether a suspicious mass is a tumor or a cyst (a fluid-filled cavity); a computer registers the echoes of sound waves bounced off of internal organs and translates them into pictures that reveal internal structure.

Computerized Axial Tomography  (CAT Scan)-   1. a machine that tanslates thousands of bits of information into a cross-sectional picture and displayed on a viewing screen; this test may show tumor invasions of surrounding structures, or enlarged lymph glands, and has become the most useful single test before surgery.

Tumor-    1. an abnormal or diseased swelling in any part of the body; overgrowth of new tissue that differs in structure from the part in which it grows.

Chemotherapy-    1. the treatment of disease by which means of chemicals that have a specific toxic effect upon the disease-producing microorganisms or that selctively destroy neoplastic tissue.

  Biopsy-    1. the excision for diagnostic study of a piece of tissue from a living body.

Benign-    1. not malignant

Malignant-    1. deadly; tending to produce death, as a disease or a tumor.

 This page was last updated on 12-17-98