The process by which a disease spreads from one part of the body to another is known as?

Metastasis is the term specifically used to describe the process in which cancer cells spread from their original site to other parts of the body through the blood or lymphatic systems. This concept is fundamental in understanding how certain diseases, particularly malignant tumors, progress and develop, impacting treatment options and prognosis.

The other terms—transmission, contagion, and infection—relate to how diseases spread in a more general sense or refer to the process of a pathogen invading the body but do not specifically describe the movement of disease from one site to another within the body itself. For example, transmission typically refers to how a disease moves from one individual to another, while contagion deals with the ability of a disease to be spread from person to person. Infection indicates that a pathogen has entered and multiplied within a host, but does not encapsulate the concept of internal movement or spread as metastasis does.