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This information is provided by Provet for educational purposes only. You should seek the advice of your veterinarian if your pet is ill as only he or she can correctly advise on the diagnosis and recommend the treatment that is most appropriate for your pet. The term malignant is widely used in veterinary medicine- but what does it mean ? In the New Collins Concise Dictionary the term "malignant" is define as "tending to cause great harm, injurious", and in pathology it means "uncontrollable or resistant to therapy". In veterinary medicine "malignant" is used to describe the most serious forms of disease. It is most often used in connection with cancer and in malignant cancers the cells:
The malignant nature of a cancer can usually be told by examining samples taken from the tumour site under a microscope, and this forms the basis of many screening tests and is the reason why biopsies of lumps are frequently taken for laboratory examination. Occasionally the term malignant is also used to describe other serious forms of disease for example :
Updated October 2013 | |||