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Written by Henry Johnson
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Chemotherapy is basically a treatment which is offered to kill cancer cells with the help of medicines. Chemotherapy includes more than 50 different medicines which can all be used in a variety of ways based on the type of cancer, the level of risk and what is the health of the person suffering from cancer. Moreover this method is also being used in different stages of cancer which means it can be used to treat solid tumors which affect body organs such as bowel or breast and also for blood cancers like leukaemia. However it could also be used on its own or along with other treatments like surgery and hormonal, radiotherapy, immune and biological therapies. It is also possible to give chemotherapy at one or more stages which are include
- The patient might be given chemotherapy before the surgery in order to shrink the rumor with the aim it becomes easy to remove. It is mainly used for the tumors which are too attached or large to surrounding tissues.
- The patient might also be given chemotherapy after the surgery to ensure that any cancerous cells remaining in the body are completely killed. This method also makes it less likely that cancer would come back.
- In case the patient has advanced cancer then chemotherapy could be used to minimize the tumor or in case it has spread to other body organs, to slow down the progress of disease and to prolong patient’s life.
There could be an individual chemotherapy treatment planned on the patient by the oncologist after diagnosing the effects of the infection. The patient might sometimes have chemotherapy along with radiotherapy which is called as chermoradiotherapy and so for some tumors it could be more effective compared to either treatment of its own. However in some types of cancers or leukaemla in particular, high dose of chemotherapy might be used. This type of treatment helps in destroying most of the immune cells of your own body and so it must be followed by bone marrow transplant. It helps in replacing the damaged tissue through the high medicinal dose.
The type of chemotherapy treatment the patient has would depend on several factors such as,
- Where the cancer started
- The type of cancer
- How the cancer cells look like when under the microscope
- Your general health
- Whether cancer has spread to other organs of your body
Moreover the patient is also monitored daily throughout the treatment through a physical examination, scan or x-ray and also urine and blood tests. Almost all the chemotherapy medicines work fine by attacking he cells which are growing rapidly. Generally the cells grow in a controlled manner and is also the process how your body grows and repairs itself. The cancer cells generally don’t stop diving but they rather carry on from the tumor to even form into blood cancer. However most of the chemotherapy medicines are designed to affect DNA in the cancer cells. The DNA is actually the chemical which stores all the genetic information about the cells. It also controls the working of the cells and the manner they should divide. Therefore by affecting this DNA most of the medicines of chemotherapy interfere with the division of the cancer cells and might also make the cancer die completely. Moreover chemotherapy medicines might also kill some healthy body cells which then lead to side effects.
About chemotherapy treatmentThe patient might likely have chemotherapy in different sessions of treatment with break in between the sessions just to provide the healthy body cells the ability to recover from the chemotheray side effects. Moreover it also ensures that all the cancer cells are completely destroyed. However at some time the cancer cells could be resting in your body and might not be killed until they are completely killed by the second round of chemotherapy. Therefore the course of chemotherapy treatment generally comprises of a number of such cycles. Moreover some patients might also be given more than two chemotherapy medicines with the aim to kill more of cancer cells than just a single medicine. This process of treatment is often called as combination therapy. Most of the chemotherapy medicines are directly fed into the bloodstream and it is called as intravenous chemotherapy which could be also be give through
- Small tube in the arm vein of the back of your hand
- A thin tube is placed in the vein in the arm’s crook and is threaded through until it is in the vein near your heart. This might often stay unremoved for several months while you could also feel the tube inside your vein.
- A thin tube inserted through your chest skin right into the main vein located close to the heart. Ti could be left in place for several months so that medicines could be injected via this tube.
- An infusion pump might also be used, which is a portable pump which is attached to the PICC line or the central line that feeds in accurate dose of chemotherapy over fixed time periods.
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