EOX Chemotherapy
Chemotherapy as you all know is associated with cancer and this is a method by which cancer cells are destroyed or the growth of these cancerous cells in the body is curbed. Today chemotherapy is used to treat various kinds of cancer like controlling the advanced stages of gastric cancer or stomach cancers to breast cancers etc.
What is EOX Chemotherapy?
EOX Chemotherapy is used to treat cancers of the stomach or in other words to treat gastric cancers. This again is a combination therapy or more than one drug is used to treat gastric cancers.
Which is the combination of drugs used here?
Three different drugs are used to treat gastric cancer namely Eloxatin (oxaliplatin), epirubicin and capecitabine. The second known cancer that affects people all over the world is gastric cancer and most of the time it is noticed only in the final stages where the survival chances of the patients is less in other words for a few months only that too without the help of any treatment. Patients suffering from gastric cancer have shown symptoms like loss of weight, epigastria discomfort, vomiting blood and anorexia. Though chemotherapy helps improve the life of the patient but that is not for more than say seven to ten months.
Different combinations of drugs are being used to treat gastric cancer in order to improve the life of the patient and these combinations are EOX (epirubicin, fluorouracil and cisplatin), EOX (capecitabine, epirubicin and oxaliplatin), Docetaxel (DCF) and irinotecan (ILF) and ECX (capecitabine or Xeloda, epirubicin and cisplatin).
Most popularly used mode of treatment is the EOX Chemotherapy as it is usually used in all the treatment cycles. Here too there is a rest period i.e. the patient is given some time to recover the normal blood cells count. Oxaliplatin and Epirubicin is administered intravenously on the day the chemotherapy is started while Capecitabine is given post operatively continuously after which there is a gap or rather a rest period so as to get the blood cells count back to normalcy.
The same mode of treatment is repeated every three quarters of a month and it is a minimum of four cycles and maximum six cycles spanning a time of three to four months.
All chemotherapy drugs are toxic drugs and so also EOC chemotherapy drugs; they not only help destroy the cancerous cells but also destroy those cells that are normal thus causing some temporary side effects. Though the effects vary from patient to patient the most commonly noticed side effects of EOX Chemotherapy are low blood count, nausea, hair loss, vomiting, mouth sores, lack of resistance power towards infections etc. The side effects disappear once the treatment is complete, yet if the side effects persists then the patient need to consult the doctor for further diagnosis.
Research is on to find better combination of drugs to increase the life span of the patient and reduce the ill effects of the drugs used to treat gastric cancer or stomach cancer as this is one kind of cancer which is not easily detected and when detected it is almost too late to help the patient get the much needed relief.