COP Chemotherapy
There are various kinds of cancer and the mode of treatment also varies from cancer to cancer. COP chemotherapy is one such mode of treatment that is used to treat chronic lymphocytic leukaemia and multiple myeloma. Here again the use of more than one drug is used ie a combination of three drugs are used to treat this kind of cancer.
Which are the drugs used to cure this cancer?
Prednisone, cycloposphamide and vincristine sulphate are the three combination drugs used to treat this cancer. The use of single drug is less effective as compared to the use of more drugs and this combination of two or more drugs is effective especially when treating chronic lymphocytic leukaemia where the patients suffer from anaemia, adenopathy and splenomegaly. The combination treatment is referred to as COP chemotherapy.
Even patients in advanced stages of the cancer have shown to respond favourably to this mode of treatment. This mode of treatment is also effective to patients suffering from multiple myeloma. Previously when alkylating agents were used the life span of the person was not more than one year and the drug used were a combination of prednisone and melphalan. COP chemotherapy mode of treatment was found to be effective than the use of melphalan and prednisone. Cyclophosphamide was found to have more therapeutic effect when treating multiple myeloma and vincristine was also found to be equally effective.
What is the mode of treatment?
As in most cancer treatments even COP chemotherapy has more than one cycle. Here two modes of treatment chemotherapy is used ie COP chemotherapy and MP chemotherapy is used to treat multiple myeloma. The treatment is repeated after a gap of seven weeks so that the patient has ample time to recover from the side effects that are associated with the treatment of cancer.
Further more to treat large cell lymphoma two different modes of treatment is used i.e. COP chemotherapy (prednisone, cyclophosphamide and vincristine) and BLAM(doxorubicin, bleomycin and procarbazine) are used alternately. This mode of treatment is usually referred to as COP-BLAM chemotherapy. There are different levels in this treatment i.e .COP-BLAM IA, IB, III, IV and V. Originally this mode of treatment used multidrug to destroy the cancerous tumor.
In the initial period of treatment COP-BLAM IA and IB can be administered to the patient and the patient does not need to be hospitalized as this produces remission completely giving a long time survival against the disease. But in the third round ie COP-BLAM III infusion therapy is used to treat this disease and in the IV round the patient has to undergo four subsequent infusion cycles of chemotherapy and in this mode of treatment the dosage is high wherein the use of high doses of doxorubicin and cyclophosphamide along with other active agents like methotrexate, etoposide and cytarabine is used. Cycle V required 4 to 6 subsequent cycles of infusion chemotherapy in order to increase the response to the treatment cycle. The IV chemotherapy is short as compared to the other stages but then this is the most effective stage of all the different stages and the effectiveness also depends upon the age, stage of cancer and the overall health of the cancer patient.