COMPLETE Guide For Chemotherapy Effects and It's Treatment

Chemotherapy Success Rates

Chemotherapy is a mode of treatment to treat various kinds of cancer. The use of different drugs to treat cancer has helped to increase the chances of success also giving these cancer patients a better chance of survival.

Different modes of treatment are used which include neo-adjuvant chemotherapy, adjuvant chemotherapy, as well as the use of combination drug chemotherapy. Today the success rate of chemotherapy is far greater than decades back as the combination drugs used are far more improved especially for treating breast cancer thus helping target patients with very sensitive tumours too. Genetic tests have helped remove seventy percent of tumours thus helping patients suffering from breast cancer.

Use of better chemotherapy drugs especially taxanes have helped increase the success rate of chemotherapy to treat cancer though these drugs are far more expensive than the other chemotherapy drugs, taxanes are also highly toxic by nature, and thus the usage of these drugs are limited. Chemotherapy can be administered before undergoing surgery and this mode of treatment is known as neo-adjuvant chemotherapy or preoperative chemotherapy.

Patients undergoing chemotherapy after surgery are termed as postoperative chemotherapy patients. Most of the time neo-adjuvant chemotherapy is preferred as this helps to shrink the tumour thus increasing the chances of survival post operative stages.

All most all chemotherapy modes of treatments are applied in cycles and at the end of each cycle there is a rest period so that the patient recovers from the side effects that are associated with chemotherapy.

The number of cycles, the mode of treatment and the drugs that are supposed to be used depends upon the type of cancer, the stage of cancer detected and the overall health of the patient. The most important factor here to increase the chances of survival is the time period of undergoing the treatment as well as the dosage of the drug to help fight against these cancerous cells.

Single drug chemotherapy has shown lesser success rate compared to the use of combination drug chemotherapy or mixture drug chemotherapy. The use of two or more drugs in chemotherapy is termed as combination chemotherapy as these combination drugs are known to attack all kinds of cancerous cells thus helping eradicate the rapid growth of these cancerous cells as compared to single drug chemotherapy.

The use of combination drugs are such that they work individually to help destroy these cancerous cells without hindering to the effects of the other drug thus proving more effective and increasing the chances of success of this mode of treatment. The different combination drugs that are used to treat cancer are CMF(cyclophosphamide, methotrexate and 5FU or fluorouracil, AT (adriamycin and taxotere), FAC( fluorouracil, adriamycin and cyclophosphamide), GET (Gemzar, epirubin and taxol) and many more such combination drugs.

Though combination drugs have shown better chances of success as well as survival the side effects that are associated with this mode of treatment are also more. The drugs used here are highly toxic by nature thus they are known not only to destroy the cancerous cells but are also known to damage the normal healthy cells that surround these cancerous cells.

Side effects that are associated with chemotherapy are hair loss, vomiting, loss of memory, weight loss, fatigue, nausea, loss of appetite, low blood cell count thus increasing the chances of infection as the resistance power of the body decreases due to anaemia etc. These side effects are temporary but then they tend to disappear after the completion of the treatment cycle.