Not all cancers are the same. Some cancers grow quickly but many grow very slowly. When you are diagnosed with some types of cancer, you might not need treatment straight away. Doctors monitor you ...

a test that looks for blood in your poo. This is a Faecal Immunochemical Test (FIT) looking at the whole of the inside of your large bowel using a flexible tube (colonoscopy) or to look at the lower ...

DPD stands for dihydropyrimidine dehydrogenase. It is an enzyme the liver makes that helps the body break down thymine and uracil. Thymine and uracil make up part of the structure of our genes. Uracil ...

Your treatment for bowel cancer depends on whether your cancer started in the large bowel or back passage. Treatments can include surgery, radiotherapy or chemotherapy or a combination of these. Bowel ...

Doctors also check your PSA level as you go through prostate cancer treatment. It can help them see how well treatment is working. Prostate specific antigen (PSA) is a protein produced by both normal ...

In the UK, the most common staging system for breast cancer is the TNM system. The TNM staging system stands for Tumour, Node, Metastasis. T describes the size of the tumour (cancer) N describes ...

Hormones are made naturally in the body. They control the growth and activity of normal cells. Before the menopause, the ovaries produce the hormones oestrogen and progesterone. After the menopause ...

Cancer that starts in the eye is called primary eye cancer. This section is about primary eye cancer. Sometimes cancer can spread to the eye from another part of the body. This is called secondary eye ...

How do doctors group prostate cancer? In the UK, doctors now use the Cambridge Prognostic Group (CPG) for prostate cancer that hasn't spread. This divides prostate cancer into 5 prognostic groups. The ...

The stage tells you how big your cancer is and whether it has spread. The grade means how abnormal the cells look under a microscope. The stage of a cancer tells you how big it is and how far it has ...

The chemotherapy drugs work by disrupting the growth of cancer cells. It kills cells that are in the process of dividing into 2 new cells. The chemotherapy drugs circulate all around the body in the ...

The grade of a cancer tells you how much the cancer cells look like normal cells. This gives your doctor an idea of how your cancer might behave and what treatment you need. Adenocarcinomas start in ...