Glossary of Medical and Health Terms

Malignant

Malignant (from the Latin roots mal- = "bad" and -genus = "born") is a medical term used to describe a severe and progressively worsening disease. The term is most familiar as a description of cancer. A malignant tumor may be contrasted with a non-cancerous benign tumor in that a malignancy is not self-limited in its growth, is capable of invading into adjacent tissues, and may be capable of spreading to distant tissues (metastasizing), while a benign tumor has none of those properties.

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malignant

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