 Patients newly diagnosed with advanced kidney cancer are often overwhelmed by the medical terminology that is tossed back and forth between healthcare providers. One of the most important things to discuss with your doctor from the start is treatment goals. Setting goals helps you manage expectations and better understand what to realistically expect from various treatment options. A complete response, also referred to as complete remission, is the disappearance of all signs of cancer in response to treatment. A complete, durable response occurs when all signs of cancer have disappeared over an extended period of time. A partial response, also called a partial remission, refers to a decrease in the size of a tumor or in the extent of cancer in the body in response to treatment. A non-response, also known as disease progression, occurs when a patient does not experience improvement or respond to treatment within a specific period of continual therapy. Choosing which therapy to use first to treat metastatic kidney cancer is a very important decision. You and your doctor need to consider the following. For which treatments are you an appropriate candidate? What are the best possible results as well as the risks? How long is the medication taken and when will you find out the results? What options will be available if your first treatment doesn't work? The Kidney Cancer Association has an excellent resource on their website where you can go to learn more oncology terms and their definitions most simply put. Visit www.kidneycancer.org.