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| Recurrence. The reappearance of a cancer at the same site or the emergence of the same type of cancer at another site. |
| Remission. Shrinkage or disappearance of the tumor. Partial remission indicates that the tumor has shrunk, usually by 50 percent, but is still detectable. Complete remission indicates that the cancer has disappeared. |
| Stage. Tumors are classified according m the extent of disease. Tumor description, tumor size, lymph node involvement, and the presence of metastasis are all used to determine the disease stage. Stage I indicates the earliest cancers, typically small tumors confined to the original site. Stages II, III, and IV indicate more extensive disease. Letters may be used along with the numerals (Stage IIb, for example) to subclassify cancers based on specific tumor characteristics. |
| Survival. The length of time a person lives after treatment. Treatment Success is often measured according to the percentage of people who survive five years. I do riot agree With this measurement. With many cancers, including colon and breast, the conventional wisdom is that five-year survival indicates a cure, and that the cancer recurs within five years, it is not going to come back, but the truth is, cancer can come back at any timesometimes up to fifteen or twenty years after an initial occurrence. |
| Tumor response. The term indicates the tumor has shrunk to some degree in response to therapy. Tumor response does not necessarily correlate with improved survival or better quality of life. As a matter of fact, many times it actually reduces the quality of life and shortens it. This is important to consider, particularly in late-stage cancers. |
| from outside the cell are referred to as growth-promoting proto-oncogenes, while tumor-suppressor genes function as growth-regulating genes. The activation of proto-oncogenes and/or inactivation of tumor-suppressor genes appear to cause a cell to become malignant. |
| Oncogenes |
| Oncogenes function as cellular messengers and come in a variety of forms. Some of them have been identified and are part of a large family referred to as |
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