Oncology Emergency, Its Dynamics of Diagnosis and Treatment From Viewpoint of General Internal Medicine

Oncology emergency refers to critical conditions among complications of cancer itself and adverse events by anti-cancer treatments. In my opinion, it can be divided into two categories including emergency in a narrow sense, which needs hasty correspondence within at least several hours, and urgency, which demands speedy one within not hours but one day. Even though they are the identical condition, certain oncologic emergencies can be assigned to different categories such as emergency, urgency and others in terms of their time course and severity. Furthermore, cancer diagnosis can be triggered by diagnosis of oncology emergency, and therefore considered to be an important theme for all of health care providers. In some sense, patients' history and physical examination are more essential than laboratory and imaging tests in order to adequately divide into three categories mentioned above and take care of patients with oncology emergency. As a general internist as well as a medical oncologist, I would like to share its importance with all of you through dynamics from diagnosis to treatment of spinal cord compression and hypercalcemia as representative of oncologic emergency.