Oncology is a branch of medicine that deals with the prevention, diagnosis, and treatment of cancer. A medical professional who practices oncology is an oncologist. Oncologist mainly focus on cancerous tumor. It's subdivisions are medical oncology, radiation oncology and surgical oncology.
Cancers are often managed through discussion on multi-disciplinary cancer conferences where medical oncologists, surgical oncologists, radiation oncologists, pathologists, radiologists, and organ-specific oncologists meet to find the best possible management for an individual patient considering the physical, social, psychological, emotional, and financial status of the patient. It is very important for oncologists to keep up-to-date with the latest advancements in oncology, as changes in the management of cancer are quite common.
The three main divisions:
Medical oncology: focuses on treatment of cancer with chemotherapy, targeted therapy, immunotherapy, and hormonal therapy.
Surgical oncology: focuses on treatment of cancer with surgery.
Radiation oncology: focuses on treatment of cancer with radiation.
Sub-specialties in Oncology:
Neuro-oncology: focuses on cancers of brain.
Ocular oncology: focuses on cancers of eye.
Head & Neck oncology: focuses on cancers of oral cavity, nasal cavity, oropharynx, hypopharyx and larynx.
Thoracic oncology: focuses on cancers of lung, mediastinum, oesophagus and pleura.
Breast oncology: focuses on cancers of breast
Gastrointestinal oncology: focuses on cancers of stomach, colon, rectum, anal canal, liver, gallbladder, pancreas.
Bone & Musculoskeletal oncology: focuses on cancers of bones and soft tissue.
Dermatological oncology: focuses on the medical and surgical treatment of skin, hair, sweat gland, and nail cancers
Genitourinary oncology: focuses on cancers of genital and urinary system.
Gynecologic oncology: focuses on cancers of the female reproductive system.
Pediatric oncology: concerned with the treatment of cancer in children.
Adolescent and young adult (AYA) oncology.
Hemato oncology: focuses on cancers of blood and stem cell transplantation
Preventive oncology: focuses on epidemiology & prevention of cancer.[94]
Geriatric oncology: focuses on cancers in elderly population.
Pain & Palliative oncology: focuses on treatment of end stage cancer to help alleviate pain and suffering.
Molecular oncology: focuses on molecular diagnostic methods in oncology.
Nuclear medicine oncology: focuses on diagnosis and treatment of cancer with radiopharmaceuticals.
Psycho-oncology: focuses on psychosocial issues on diagnosis and treatment of cancer patients.
Veterinary oncology: focuses on treatment of cancer in animals.
Emerging specialties:
Computational oncology. An example is PRIMAGE. This four-year EU-funded Horizon 2020 project was launched in December 2018. The project proposes a cloud-based platform to support decision making in the clinical management of malignant solid tumours, offering predictive tools to assist diagnosis, prognosis, therapies choice and treatment follow up, based on the use of novel imaging biomarkers, in-silico tumour growth simulation, advanced visualisation of predictions with weighted confidence scores and machine-learning based translation of this knowledge into predictors for the most relevant, disease-specific, Clinical End Points.
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