CMedEd | Cancer Explained

CMedEd > Cancer Explained

Cancer Explained

What is Cancer?

Cancer is the uncontrollable growth of cells. Cells are the basic building blocks of all living organisms. There are over 10 trillion cells in the human body. Normal cells have an orderly life cycle. They divide and multiply only when they need to and they die when they are damaged or no longer function properly. Cancer cells lose the ability to control their growth. They divide rapidly, creating new cancer cells, and do not die, even when they are damaged.

Cancer Caregivers' Guide

A caregiver is usually a close relative of a cancer patient who gives them physical assistance and emotional support throughout treatment. The caregiver role begins once cancer or treatments begin to interfere with the patient's daily life. Caregivers have many responsibilities and are a key member of the healthcare team.

Ask the Right Questions

As a patient, you're entitled to ask your health care providers anything. In that sense, there are no bad questions. But some questions will help you get more out of your interaction with your health care providers than others. This advice comes from my experience as a medical oncologist and a cancer survivor. Before asking your questions, remember that you're dealing with a human being. Doctors are not gods or saints. We try to remain professional, but just like anyone else, we prefer to deal with those who are pleasant.

Communicating With Your Doctor

A healthy doctor-patient relationship is a very important part of cancer care. Good communication between doctors, patients, and caregivers helps all parties build a trusting relationship and openly share information and feelings with one another. Patients may experience many difficult thoughts and emotions when they receive their diagnosis, and it may be hard for them to make important decisions about treatment. Good communication helps the patient be more well-informed and feel more at ease when making these decisions.

Life After Cancer

A cancer survivor is any living person who has ever been diagnosed with cancer. Someone is known as a cancer survivor from their initial diagnosis to the end of their life. Due to advances in medicine, cancer patients are surviving longer and leading fuller lives both during and after treatment. There are about 14 million cancer survivors living in the United States, and about 75% of American families have at least one family member who has been diagnosed with cancer.

Deciding on Hospice Care

In medieval times, the word "hospice" referred to monasteries and convents where travelers could find lodging and comfort along their journey. Many times, these travelers were ill and spent their final days being cared for by nuns and monks. Today, hospice is a similar concept of care focused on improving the quality of life of terminally ill cancer patients, allowing them to live out their final days in comfort and dignity.

Understanding Palliative Care

Palliative care is any form of treatment given to cancer patients to relieve symptoms and side effects of the disease and improve quality of life. The goal of palliative care is not to cure the disease, but to make the patient as comfortable as possible throughout their journey with cancer. Palliative care addresses the patient's physical, emotional, and spiritual needs, and also helps with more practical issues.

Understanding and Managing Cancer Pain

Pain is an important part of your body's natural defense system. Pain is your body's way of warning you of something that might hurt or telling you that it is injured in some way. For example, the pain you feel when you touch a hot stove warns you to pull your hand away to avoid getting burned. The pain you feel if you break your leg prevents you from walking around or using your leg so that it can properly heal.

Managing the Side Effects of Chemotherapy

Chemotherapy is the use of drugs to treat rapidly growing cancer cells in an effort to destroy them. These drugs target all rapidly growing cells in order to eliminate the cancer, so they can also destroy healthy cells, including those in the blood, mouth, throat, stomach, and hair. This damage to healthy cells is responsible for most of chemotherapy's side effects. Most of the side effects of chemotherapy are short term, and rarely last much longer than treatment.

Managing the Side Effects of Radiation Therapy

Radiation therapy uses waves of high energy rays or particles to kill cancer cells. Doctors give radiation therapy to shrink the tumor before surgery and eliminate any traces of cancer left after surgery. In external beam radiation, a large machine aims radiation at your tumor from outside the body. External beam radiation is usually administered five days a week for approximately five to seven weeks.

Recurrent Cancer

You have finished your cancer treatments and your doctor can no longer find any cancer cells in your body. Your doctor tells you that your cancer is in remission, meaning your treatment was successful and the cancer is gone. You may feel great for having survived cancer or you may still be physically and emotionally exhausted from treatment.

Autologous Bone Marrow and Peripheral Blood Stem Cell Transplantation

Autologous Bone Marrow & Peripheral Blood Stem Cell Transplantation

The patient's own stem-cells are harvested before chemotherapy and/or radiation and reinfused into their bloodstream after treatment. Patients who undergo autologous transplants have a lower risk of infection because their immune system tends to recover more rapidly when receiving their own stem cells. Autologous transplants may carry some (usually quite low) risk of graft rejection (i.e. the patient’s own stem cells fail to “take”).

Allogeneic Bone Marrow and Peripheral Blood Stem Cell Transplantation

Allogeneic Bone Marrow & Peripheral Blood Stem Cell Transplantation

Stem cells are taken from a matched donor whose human leukocyte antigens (HLAs) match the patient's. It is important to find a good match to prevent graft rejection, where the patient’s own immune system rejects the transplanted stem cells. It is also important to find a good match to prevent graft-versus-host-disease (GVHD), where the donor’s immune system rejects the patient's own body systems.

Understanding Genomic Testing

Genomic testing refers to new tests that are available to obtain information about the molecular characteristics of a tumor. These tests can identify specific genetic changes in the DNA of cells that cause the malignant cells to grow and multiply. By identifying the genetic alterations in the DNA of your cancer cells, doctors can recommend new targeted therapies that attack the specific mutations causing your cancer growth.

Understanding Proton Therapy

Proton therapy is an advanced new type of radiation therapy that uses “protons” rather than X-ray “photons” to deliver radiation to the tumor. Proton therapy can target tumors much more precisely and with higher amounts of radiation than conventional radiotherapy, resulting in less damage to healthy tissue and fewer side-effects.

Cancer Medications

Chemotherapy is the use of drugs to target rapidly growing cells in an effort to destroy cancer cells. Chemotherapy drugs kill healthy cells as well as cancer cells. The drug is referred to as systemic, since it travels through the entire body. Chemotherapy medications may be given through the vein (intravenously) or by mouth (orally).

Understanding Anemia

Anemia is a common side effect of many chemotherapy treatments and affects seven out of ten people during their treatment. Anemia is a condition in which the body does not make enough healthy red blood cells. Red blood cells are produced in the bone marrow and carry oxygen throughout the body. When your red blood cells are very low, your organs and body tissues don't get enough oxygen and can't function properly.

Understanding Neutropenia

Neutropenia is a common side effect for many chemotherapy treatments. As many as one in three patients experience neutropenia during their treatments. Neutropenia is a shortage of neutrophils, a specific type of white blood cell that destroys bacteria and protects you from infection and disease. White blood cells play an important part in preventing infections. Neutropenia can increase your risk for infection, because there are not enough bacteria fighting cells in your body. Your doctor will closely monitor your condition with routine blood tests and can prescribe medication to increase your white blood cells if needed.

Understanding Laboratory Tests

Doctors use laboratory tests to diagnose cancer, assess its severity, and monitor treatment progress and side effects. A laboratory test is a procedure in which a sample of a bodily fluid (i.e. blood, urine, mucus) or tissue (i.e. tumor sample, lymph node, bone marrow) is examined under a microscope in a laboratory. Laboratory tests can provide important information about a patient’s general health and organ function, and may be used for any of the following reasons.

Understanding Tumor Markers

Tumor markers are substances that can be found in higher than normal amounts in a person's blood, urine, or bodily tissues when they have a specific type of cancer. Some substances are tumor markers for a specific cancer, while others are tumor markers for multiple cancers. Tumor markers can be used in different ways, depending on the specific type of cancer. Most tumor markers can be used to monitor the extent of the disease and the patient’s response to treatment. Some tumor markers can also be used to detect a cancer recurrence, to give doctors an idea of the prognosis (chance of recovery), to help doctors with treatment-planning, to confirm a diagnosis (in conjunction with other tests), and/or to screen for cancer in undiagnosed individuals.

Preventing chemotherapy induced nausea and vomiting

Prevention and Control of Chemotherapy-Induced Nausea and Vomiting

Although nausea and vomiting commonly occur together, they are separate conditions. Nausea is an unpleasant wavelike feeling in the back of the throat or stomach that may or may not result in vomiting. Vomiting is the forceful emptying of the contents of the stomach through the mouth.

Managing Peripheral Neuropathy During Your Chemotherapy

Peripheral neuropathy is numbness and tingling in the hands and feet as a result of peripheral nerve damage from cancer treatment. Damage to peripheral nerve cells, the cells responsible for sensation that carry information from the brain to other parts of the body, leads to peripheral neuropathy.

Staging System Explained

Staging refers to the extent of your cancer, such as how large the tumor is, and if it has spread. A cancer is always referred to by the stage it was given at diagnosis, even if it gets worse or spreads. Your doctor may stage your cancer using one or a combination of cancer staging systems.

D
Type 2 Diabetes

Find a Tumor Type

Disclaimer - The contents of CMedEd.Com are for informational purposes only and are not a replacement for professional medical advice. Always consult your physician about any medical concerns or conditions. CMedEd.Com does not endorse any specific tests, procedures, physicians, or other information mentioned on the website.

CMedEd - Leading Cancer Information Resource

CMedEd Menu

Languages