Articles for patients and families facing cancer: how screening and diagnosis work, what staging means, how the main treatment types differ and how to prepare for appointments. General information; treatment decisions belong to your oncology team.
A tumor board is a scheduled meeting where specialists from several fields, typically medical, surgical and radiation oncologists, a pathologist and a radiologist, review…
Ovarian cancer surgery recovery usually means a hospital stay of a few days to a week, then roughly six to eight weeks of gradually…
Pain after mastectomy is usually most noticeable in the first two to three days, then eases steadily over one to two weeks as swelling…
Mohs surgery scars usually look their worst in the first several weeks, when the line is red, firm and slightly raised, then soften and…
Bladder cancer treatment is planned around one finding: whether the tumor has grown into the bladder's muscle wall. Non-muscle-invasive disease is usually treated by…
Colon cancer treatment by stage generally moves from surgery alone for early tumors (stage 0 to I), to surgery with chemotherapy only for higher-risk…
A lung cancer second opinion is usually worthwhile when the diagnosis is new and treatment has not started, when the cancer type, stage, or…
TARE and TACE are both catheter-based treatments that reach liver tumors through the hepatic artery, but they attack the tumor differently. TACE delivers a…
Melanoma treatment is planned by stage. Stage 0, 1 and most stage 2 melanomas are usually treated with surgery alone, removing the tumor with…
The CAR-T cell therapy process has five stages: evaluation, leukapheresis (collecting your own T cells from the blood), laboratory manufacturing that genetically equips those…
Cervical cancer treatment is chosen mainly by stage: very small early tumors may be removed with a cone biopsy or hysterectomy; larger early tumors…
Skin cancer surgery healing usually takes several weeks, with most stitched wounds closing within one to three weeks and Mohs wounds settling over roughly…
After an inguinal orchiectomy for testicular cancer, most people go home the same or next day, feel sore for about a week, and are…
Brachytherapy for cervical cancer is usually paired with external beam radiation because each does a job the other cannot. External beam treats the whole…
A sentinel lymph node biopsy for melanoma removes the first one or two lymph nodes that drain the skin where the melanoma grew, so…
Most people need about four to six weeks to recover from a mastectomy, and closer to six to eight weeks when reconstruction is done…
Mohs surgery is usually not very painful. The area is numbed with a local anesthetic, so the main discomfort is the brief sting of…
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