Wednesday 18 April 2012

Chemotherapy for cancer patients

In early times, the sole treatment of cancer was surgery. But with the introduction of chemotherapy, it became easy to cure cancer. Chemotherapy for cancer patients is one of the best and renowned methods for the treatment of cancer. There are various types of chemotherapy that are given to the patients such as first line chemotherapy, second line chemotherapy, neo-adjuvant chemotherapy and adjuvant chemotherapy. The main aim of giving chemotherapy is to destroy the cancerous cells and stop the spreading of cancer to the other parts of the body.


Usually women suffer from breast cancer, which is one of the common diseases in the recent times. Breast cancer chemotherapy involves giving medicines to the patients orally as well as intravenously. The oral chemotherapy includes giving tablets or pills as prescribed by the surgeon and intravenous method includes giving medicine in the form of liquid that is injected directly into the bloodline of the patient. Sometimes medicines are combined and injected to the patient's veins directly, through a catheter. Usually chemotherapy is given to the patients with low dose in the early stage, but further on the dose is increased. The dose is usually increased when the patient is suffering from diseases like leukemia.

The process of chemotherapy is also followed by surgery so as to kill the cancerous cells, present in the patient’s body, permanently. Chemotherapy is also combined with hormonal therapy, radiation therapy as well as surgery. These therapies are used depending upon the stage of cancer the patient is suffering from. If the cancer is caught at the early stage, then it becomes easy to cure it. But as the stages move on, it becomes difficult for even the surgeons/doctors to cure it. The main disadvantage of cancer is that once it is enters the body of the person, it spreads at a faster pace, thus making it difficult to detect at its early stage.

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