A Guide to Cancer for Patients

 

Welcome to CancerQuest! CQ was created to provide easy-to-understand and accurate information about cancer biology and treatment. We serve patients, caretakers, and doctors/educators from Winship Cancer Institute, Georgia, and around the world. Our patient information content includes:

If you want to understand cancer treatments, it is essential to know what makes cancer 'tick'.
Check out our Graphical Guide To Cancer Biology to get a solid overview and then you can come back here to learn more.

Frequently Asked Cancer Questions - This page contains a list of common questions about cancer and its treatment. Also provided are links to more in-depth information on the topics.

What is Cancer? - This page describes, in more detail, what makes cancer cells different from normal cells and some common cancer-related terms are introduced.

Visual Guide to Cancer Terms - Contains many short animations. Each one provides a short definition of a word or phrase that is commonly used in discussions about cancer treatment.

Cancer by Type - Contains detailed information about some of the most common cancer types. Additional cancer types are added regularly.

Cancer Prevention - Provides unbiased information about many different foods/chemicals/activities that have been examined for their ability to prevent/reduce cancer.

Detection and Diagnosis of Cancer - This section contains general information about the detection and diagnosis of cancer as well as detailed information about a large number of specific medical tests used to detect/diagnose cancer.  Additional information describes the staging ad pathology of cancer.

Cancer Treatment - Many different cancer treatments are described in this section.  Information is available about the ways that cancer treatments work as well as details about specific cancer drugs and treatments.

Integrative Oncology- Many cancer patients seek treatments in addition to those prescribed by their clinical team.  These include yoga, dietary supplements, and prayer.  Learn more about the effectiveness and activity of these treatments. Note that many people refer to treatments taken with standard Western medical care as 'complementary' and treatments taken instead of Western medical care as 'alternative'.

Drug Resistance - One of the major reasons that cancer can be difficult to treat is the development of resistance to cancer drugs. This page explains how and why this happens.

Clinical Trials - Clinical trials are the way that new cancer treatments get tested and approved.  This section describes clinical trials and provides sources to help patients find clinical trials.

Side Effects - Cancer treatments and cancer itself can cause a wide range of symptoms.  This page describes the different ways that cancer and treatments can affect a patient and details the treatments used to address the problems.

Psychosocial Problems - The effects of a cancer diagnosis are far-reaching, and impact the quality of life of patients and their loved ones in many ways. These include psychological and financial impacts.

Survivorship - Cancer survivorship begins as soon as one is diagnosed.  This section of the website contains information to help cancer patients and their caregivers deal with the impact of cancer on their lives, both short and long term

Information for Caregivers - A cancer diagnosis affects more than just the patient.  The people taking care of a cancer patient also face many challenges and stresses. These can be difficult to address but are very important for the well-being of everyone.

Cancer Disparities - Cancer does not affect all groups of people equally, and those affected may have different outcomes based on their circumstances - including financial and geographical.

Additional Resources - We have compiled a list of reliable sources of cancer information for cancer patients and their families. 

Videos - We have created over 1000 cancer education animations and videos.  Many address cancer treatment and medical procedures. This link will take you to a different section of the site.