Why is it called “non-small” with like cancers and stuff? Why not like “large?” “Non-small” doesn’t seem very descriptive. You don’t go to McDonald’s and order “non-small” fries. They’d be like “Ok then, what fucking size do you want?”
In: Biology
It’s important to note that small cell carcinoma is the name of a specific lung cancer. The analogy is much closer to you ordering a sandwich and the teller asking if you want it “with cheese” or “without cheese.” Non-small cell cancer means “cancer without these specific cells we call *small cells,*” not “cancer with cells of undefined size.”
Sometimes in medicine, we name things by the significant thing that they aren’t. Examples include non-small cell carcinoma of the lung, non-Hodgkin lymphoma, non-ST elevation myocardial infarction, non-epileptic seizure, etc. Sometimes these eventually get renamed to their own disease: for example, non-tropical sprue is now commonly known as celiac disease. Sometimes it goes the other way: pseudoseizures are now commonly called non-epileptic seizure as they are not always psychogenic as the name “pseudoseizure” implies.
With lung cancer, small cell lung cancer is its own thing and behaves differently from other lung cancers. Biopsy can further differentiate them (adenocarcinoma, squamous cell, etc.), but sometimes the cancer is too advanced to get a clear etiology, or sometimes the biopsy results aren’t available, so non-small cell is generally used, especially in the earlier stages of evaluation.
Latest Answers