Osteosarcoma Chemotherapy
The most effective mode of treatment for cancer is chemotherapy. Chemotherapy is used to treat all kinds of cancer including breast cancer, lung cancer, cologne cancer, head and neck cancer, breast cancer and many different types of cancer too. Chemotherapy is also used to treat osteosarcoma. Initially the medications that were administered did not give in the much required positive effect but today advancement in research has proved a boon to patients suffering from osteosarcoma.
What is osteosarcoma?
Osteosarcoma is a kind of bone cancer which affects children and the main characteristic is the production of immature bones by these malignant cells. Here the cancer starts in the bones gradually spreading to the other bones of the body and also affects the lungs. Osteosarcoma is found to affect children in their teens when there is the rise in the growth hormone. This disease affects both the gender but is more prominent in boys than in girls and the disease starts in the knee.
Osteosarcoma is due to the unpredictable DNA expansion when the growth hormones are at their peak of expansion. Research is on to find a suitable way to prevent this type of cancer, though this type of cancer can be treated and the chances of recovery is good if proper diagnosis is done along with timely treatment.
Chemotherapy has proved successful in treating osteosarcoma. If treated in the initial stages osteosarcoma can be eradicated. The use of chemotherapy for both preoperative as well as postoperative chemotherapy has greatly reduced the chances of lung metastases thus increasing the chances of survival. There are different modes of treatment to treat osteosarcoma. In these mode of treatment both neo-adjuvant as well as adjuvant chemotherapy can be applied.
What is adjuvant chemotherapy?
This mode of treatment is also termed as postoperative chemotherapy which has proved beneficial and is known to improve the chances of survival where treatment for high grade osteosarcoma is followed after surgery. This mode of treatment is applied to both adults and children who undergo treatment for osteosarcoma.
Adjuvant chemotherapy has proved successful in enhancing the quality of life of patients suffering from osteosarcoma, but then the choice of undergoing this mode of treatment is still going through a lot of controversy. But even today this mode of treatment is used to prevent the loss of limb in extreme cases.
Here the mode of treatment is for about five weeks, different combination drugs are used for the treatment. There are side effects associated with chemotherapy here too and to prevent the side effects the use of folinic acid is administered in the form of a drip for a couple of days after undergoing methotrexate treatment.
Due to chemotherapy the survival chances of patients suffering from malignant osteosarcoma has increased largely. While some time back before the use of systemic chemotherapy most of the patients gradually developed metastases or were detected with tumour and lost their lives. Today you can fall upon chemotherapy especially the adjuvant chemotherapy to help treat osteosarcoma in order to increase the chance of survival as well as a quality life too.