There is so much jargon that it is impossible to cover everything, but your first and most important source of advice should always be your medical team – the doctors and the nurses – who can translate the jargon into a language you can understand. Sometimes, this is not always possible in busy clinics, or if you are overwhelmed with information or perhaps feeling intimidated by the whole situation and unable to say that you do not understand what you have just been told.

Here just a few terms to get going, but please do let us know if you would like to consult us for help with your specific questions.

Cancer

Malignancy

Tumour

Mass

Cancerous cells

Cancer cells

Tumour cells

Malignant cells

– these terms all refer to your cancer!

Chemotherapy

– treatment with drugs, given by mouth or by injection, that kill cancer cells by interfering with the DNA machinery

Radiotherapy

– treatment using x-rays and a variety of other types of radiation to treat cancer. This is for treatment of a tumour by ‘shining’ the rays directly on it. This is different from “systemic” chemotherapy drugs, which travel in the blood to get to the tumour cells.

Systemic therapy

– this term refers to treatments that travel in the blood and circulate around the body, namely, treatment with drugs given by mouth or injection

– these treatments can reach tumour cells wherever they are

Targeted treatment

– newer drugs designed to hit specific ‘targets’ in cancer cells. These targets are usually involved in keeping cells alive and/or helping them grow and multiply

Immunotherapy

– there are a variety of different treatments that can be called immunotherapy and are usually drugs

– these drugs may affect your immune system to be more active against the cancer

– or the drug itself may be an immune molecule that can directly attack the cancer (such as, antibodies)

– another use of antibody drugs is to combine them with a chemotherapy drug or other toxin. Here the antibody helps “transport” the active drug to the cancer. This helps reduce the side-effects of anti-cancer drug, which is kept safely attached to the antibody until the antibody finds the cancer and then ‘fires’ the anti-cancer payload it has been carrying.

There are many other types of treatment and much more medical jargon for them, as well as the terms list above. You will undoubtedly have been faced with other medical jargon and If you need help understanding this, we help.

Understanding the medical jargon – response to treatment

You might not always understand what your doctors have told you or, even worse, you may have misunderstood. Not knowing, being uncertain, and simply being wrong about what you think you have been told, are all further stresses when you are facing the challenge of coping with cancer and the treatments.

Medical jargon is the language of doctors, designed to convey specific meanings to other doctors, who have all spent many years learning this language! Medical jargon is not designed to help you.

There is so much jargon that it is impossible to cover everything, but your first and most important source of advice should always be your medical team – the doctors and the nurses – who can translate the jargon into a language you can understand. Sometimes, this is not always possible in busy clinics, or if you are overwhelmed with information or perhaps feeling intimidated by the whole situation and unable to say that you do not understand what you have just been told.

Here just a few terms to get going, but please do let us know if you would like to consult us for help with your specific questions and have a look at our previous blogs on jargon.

Remission

– the cancer has responded to treatment. Remission does not necessarily mean a cure. So, please be careful of medical jargon!

Complete Remission/Response

– the cancer is no longer detectable (by blood tests, scans, biopsies…). A complete remission does not necessarily mean a cure.

Partial Remission/Response

– the cancer has responded to treatment but residual cancer can still be detected (by blood tests, scans, biopsies…)

Relapse

– following a period of remission, the cancer has returned/is progressing.

Assessing the response to treatment can be complex and may vary between different types of tumour. Of course, each scenario will have different medical jargon. You will undoubtedly have been faced with other medical jargon and If you need help understanding this, please tell us.