Are you an EPFL student looking for a semester project?
Work with us on data science and visualisation projects, and deploy your project as an app on top of Graph Search.
Concept
Oncology
Summary
Oncology is a branch of medicine that deals with the study, treatment, diagnosis and prevention of tumors. A medical professional who practices oncology is an oncologist. The name's etymological origin is the Greek word ὄγκος (ónkos), meaning "tumor", "volume" or "mass". Oncology is concerned with:
The diagnosis of any cancer in a person (pathology)
Therapy (e.g. surgery, chemotherapy, radiotherapy and other modalities)
Follow-up of cancer patients after successful treatment
Palliative care of patients with terminal malignancies
Ethical questions surrounding cancer care
Screening efforts:
of populations, or
of the relatives of patients (in types of cancer that are thought to have a hereditary basis, such as breast cancer)
Medical histories remain an important screening tool: the character of the complaints and nonspecific symptoms (such as fatigue, weight loss, unexplained anemia, fever of unknown origin, paraneoplastic phenomena and other signs) may warrant further investigation for malignancy. Occasionally, a physical examination may find the location of a malignancy.
Diagnostic methods include:
Biopsy or resection; these are methods by which suspicious neoplastic growths can be removed in part or in whole, and evaluated by a pathologist to determine malignancy. This is currently the gold standard for the diagnosis of cancer and is crucial in guiding the next step in management (active surveillance, surgery, radiation therapy, chemotherapy or a combination of these)
Endoscopy, either upper or lower gastrointestinal, cystoscopy, bronchoscopy, or nasendoscopy; to localise areas suspicious for malignancy and biopsy when necessary.
X-rays, CT scanning, MRI scanning, ultrasound and other radiological techniques to localise and guide biopsy.
Scintigraphy, single photon emission computed tomography (SPECT), positron emission tomography (PET) and other methods of nuclear medicine to identify areas suspicious for malignancy.
Blood tests, including tumor markers, which can increase the suspicion of certain types of cancers.
Official source
About this result
This page is automatically generated and may contain information that is not correct, complete, up-to-date, or relevant to your search query. The same applies to every other page on this website. Please make sure to verify the information with EPFL's official sources.