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Cancer Cells

What is oncology?

Oncology is the study and treatment of cancers which is the most common cause of premature death in Australia.

The term cancer describes a large group of diseases which have abnormal cells rapidly growing in the body which dominate healthy, normal cell production.

Cancer can also be referred to as tumours or neoplasms and this describes  non cancerous cells which aren’t dangerous of life threatening.

The most common cancers in Australia (not including non-melanoma skin cancer) are prostate, colorectal (bowel), breast, melanoma and lung cancer but there are 49 main categories of cancer which have their own specialist area for treatment and research plus scores of other less common types of cancer.

As medical technology improves, the number of people being successfully treated has decreased and it’s estimated half of all cancers can be cured if diagnosed early enough.