CHEMOTHERAPY

A type of treatment that kills the cancer cells by damaging them so they can’t reproduce and spread is called Chemotherapy. There are several ways in which chemotherapy medication can be given, including tablets and injections directly into a vein. The main aim of treatment may be:

• to try to cure cancercompletely – this is known as curative chemotherapy
• to help make other treatments more effective– for example, chemotherapy can be combined with radiotherapy (where radiation is used to kill cancerous cells), or it can be used before surgery
• to reduce the risk of the cancer returningafter radiotherapy or surgery
• to relieve symptoms– chemotherapy may be used to relieve the symptoms and slow it down; this is known as palliative chemotherapy

Low doses of chemotherapy is also used to treat non-cancerous conditions like lupus and rheumatoid arthritis.

Side effects

Even though chemotherapy is often effective at treating cancer or relieving its symptoms, it does cause side effects. One significant symptom of this treatment is hair loss. It also includes feeling tired and weak all the time and/or feeling and being sick.

Dealing with the side effects of chemotherapy is challenging. It’s important to keep in mind that most, if not all, side effects will disappear once the treatment is complete.

Side effects brought by chemotherapy cannot be passed to other people such as children or pregnant women. There is really no problem if they get near with someone undergoing the said medication.

Targeted therapies

Before there are no other medication used to treat cancer aside from chemotherapy. However, for the last 20 years, there are new innovative medication introduced to kill cancer cells. One of the well known type of medication is called as targeted therapies. This is because they’re designed to target and disrupt one or more of the biological processes that cancerous cells use to grow and reproduce.