Glossary of Common Terms in Cancer Treatment:

4-D Radiation Therapy: 4DRT employs advanced technology to track and compensate for target motion during radiation treatment, minimizing normal tissue injury, especially to adjacent critical structures, while maximizing radiation dose to the target.

Adjuvant Therapy: A cancer treatment that comes AFTER your first (or primary) treatment. For example, you may have an operation (surgery), followed by radiation or chemotherapy. The radiation or chemotherapy would be called an adjuvant therapy.

Anemia: A decrease in the number of red blood cells. Signs and symptoms include tiredness, pale skin, shortness of breath.

Biological Response Modifiers: Drugs used to change the body's immune response to cancer cells.

Bone Marrow Transplant: Injecting bone marrow into a patient from either a donor or stored marrow from the patient. This helps people to grow new bone cells after very high doses of chemotherapy and/or radiation therapy.

Brachytherapy: Wires, seeds or needles that have a source of radiation inside them. These wires, seeds or needles are put into a cancer tumor, or into a place where a cancer tumor used to be. They are left there for a period of time.

CBC: (Complete Blood Count) A blood test that measures the number of white blood cells, red blood cells and platelets.

Chemotherapy: The use of drugs to treat cancer, often called chemo.

Clinical Trial: A clinical trial is a research study with cancer patients to learn about new treatments and to find better ways of giving current treatments.

Computed Tomography (CT): A CT scan uses X-rays to produce detailed pictures of structures inside the body. The process is also known as a computerized axial tomography (CAT) scan. The imaging works by using computer processing to generate an image of the absorption of X-rays in a field of view. The field of view is devised as a slice so that a complete examination of the brain or body may be obtained by taking a series of slices, one above the other.

Fractionation: A term used when the total dose of radiation is divided into smaller doses, generally given over a period of days to give normal healthy cells time to heal.

Gamma rays: A type of radiation of shorter wavelength and higher energy than kilovoltage X-rays used for diagnosis characterized by the fact it was generated by a radioactive isotope.

Hormone Therapy: The use of hormones (given as drugs) to treat some kinds of cancer.

Hypofractionation: Small doses of radiation delivered during multiple treatment sessions that extend over several days. Hypofractionation is necessary when the full dose cannot be confined to the target area; use of smaller doses helps to minimize the damage to the tissue around the target, and multiple days allows it to recover from the radiation dose it receives.

IGRT: Image-guided radiation therapy is a technology advancement that enables the use of frequent imaging during a course of radiation therapy to support precision and accuracy in areas prone to movement, such as lungs and prostate gland, as well as for tumors located close to critical organs and tissues.

GLOSSARY OF COMMON TERMS IN CANCER TREATMENT