cancer chemotherapy

admin — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 12:36:00 +0000

As a disease cancer consists of the uncontrolled malignant cellular growth, the invasion of organs and the metastasis. It seams that the cause of the condition is a combination of genetic predisposition and the exposure to some environmental toxins.

Basically, the chemotherapy drug s functioning principle is to impair cell division (mitosis), targeting rapidly-dividing cells. The damage they produce among cells, gives chemotherapy drugs the name of cytotoxic medication.

Chemotherapy, generally speaking, implies the treatment of a disease by means of chemicals which kill the sick cells. Particularly speaking, chemotherapy is used to kill the cells of micro-organisms or cancer. The most common chemotherapy drug regimen is made up from a combination of antineoplastic medication that represents the cytotoxic standardized treatment. From a non-oncological perspective, the term chemotherapy also refers to antibiotics this is known as antibacterial chemotherapy.

A chemotherapy drug, or better a combination of such drugs, functions on the principle of cellular destruction. Unfortunately, these drugs also affect/attack other healthy cells that divide rapidly. These other cells that get attacked by a chemotherapy drug are digestive tract linings, the bone marrow and the hair follicles. Thus, the main side effects of chemotherapy will include hair loss, the inflammation of the digestive tract and the reduced production of blood cells.

A chemotherapy drug could also be prescribed for the treatment of other problems such as autoimmune diseases namely rheumatoid arthritis and multiple sclerosis. More modern cancer treatments known as targeted therapy use anti-cancer medication that attacks only the abnormal proteins in cancer cells.

When talking about a chemotherapy drug, we should be aware that there are different types available at present. Thus there are antimetabolites, alkylating agents, topoisomerase inhibitors, anthracyclines and several others. Some newer agents, like monoclonal antibodies and tyrosine kinase inhibitors, do not interfere directly with the DNA as do the above mentioned ones.

Such modern drugs target a molecular abnormality in peculiar types of cancer such as chronic myelogenous leukemia or gastrointestinal stromal tumors. More special chemotherapy drug options only change the behavior of the tumor cells without affecting other tissues. Within these adjuvant therapies the option very commonly used is the hormone treatment.

The decision to administer only one chemotherapy drug or a combination of several medicines belongs to the doctor and it is taken depending on the stage of the disease and the purpose of the treatment.

types of chemotherapy

admin — Sat, 23 May 2009 14:12:00 +0000

chemotherapy treatment

The administration of cancer chemotherapy drugs becomes imminent and almost inevitable once a patient is diagnosed with cancer.

Health care providers should not overlook the importance of treatment transparency and the necessity for good communication with the person under medication. The doctor-patient relationship is almost as important nowadays as the suggested cancer chemotherapy is because offering a good treatment without carefully explaining the steps to follow and the potential side effects that may appear along the way may completely discourage the patient. When there is professional support and human compassion in the approach to the illness, cancer patients have higher chances of recovery thanks to the positive attitude.

The basis for cancer chemotherapy was put in 1940 when doctors used folic acid an nitrogen mustards in the role of antagonist drugs. With the growing number of tumor cases, cancer chemotherapy has gradually turned into an industry registering huge success on the market through the wide variety of drugs that it produces. Even though one may think that the world has impressively evolved since the 1940s, it is surprisingly enough to mention that most of the principles discovered back then in cancer chemotherapy still apply today.

Sometimes chemotherapy seems not to be efficient enough to stop the growth of cancer cells. Consequently, where combined chemotherapy fails, surgery has to take the lead. Not even surgery can always remove a tumor completely, particularly since the cancerous cells may grow back again. So doctors and researchers have come up with an adjuvant cancer chemotherapy treatment that relies on drugs meant to prevent the recurrence of cancer and clear away any signs of cancer left after removing the tumor. This cancer chemotherapy adjuvant seems to have really lengthened the life of many patients suffering from colon cancer.

Chemotherapy means drugs that have various purposes and patients should learn what types of drugs they are using and what risks or side effects these drugs pose. There are plenty of categories of cancer chemotherapy drugs, and anyone interested can research on the Internet or in books. Whichever the medium of information, remember that associating the action of the drug, with the risks it brings along and with what other medicine it can be combined is utterly important before starting a certain cancer chemotherapy treatment.

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cancer chemotherapy

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