Chemotherapy is a form of medical treatment for a number of medical conditions like lupus, rheumatoid arthritis, and most specifically cancer. Chemotherapy treatment involves the use of certain medications which help in destroying cancer cells and stopping the further multiplication of tumor cells in body. As cancer cells typically grow and multiply at a much faster pace than normal cells of the body, the use of chemotherapy is more effective to kill these cancer cells. Chemotherapy usually functions by stopping the cancer cells from multiplying, growing, and dividing. The chemotherapy drugs are quite powerful and they can also cause damage to the surrounding healthy cells in a patient’s body.Although chemotherapy is a more invasive cancer treatment but it ensures the maximum killing of cancer cells in majority of cancer patients. The damage resulting due to chemotherapy drugs to the normal cells is known as the side effects of chemotherapy, which is also common with other treatments for cancer patients. The goals of chemotherapy rely on the severity of cancer and the type of cancer a patients is having. However, the goal of chemotherapy is sometimes to kill all the cancer cells and avoid it from coming back but in some types of cancer it is not possible. In other cases, a patient might receive chemotherapy to slow down or delay the growth of cancer cells.
Slowing or delaying the growth of cancer cells with chemotherapy might also help in the management of symptoms resulting due to cancer. The type of therapy which slows down cancer growth is sometimes known as palliative chemotherapy. There are several drugs available to kill and destroy cancer cells. A doctor with a specialization in treating cancer with drugs is known as a medical oncologist. The medical oncologist prescribes a cancer patient with chemotherapy drugs by looking into how far the cancer is spreading in a certain patient. A patient might receive a combination of medications because this sometimes works more effectively than the use of only one drug.
The dose, treatment schedule, and drugs depend on several factors, which include the body weight, the type of cancer, how well a patient is coping with the symptoms, tumor size, the location of cancer, the spread of cancer, age of the patient. The health care team of a cancer patient might give him chemotherapy drugs at the doctor’s office, clinic, or in a hospital setting. Some patients can also receive chemotherapy drugs orally by staying at home. A patient might receive chemotherapy drugs for a certain time, like for a year or six months while some patients might receive chemotherapy for as long as chemotherapy is working.
Side effects of several chemotherapy drugs are too invasive to give treatment every single day. Doctors typically give chemotherapy drugs with intervals so a patient has some time to recover and rest before initiating the next treatment dose. Giving dose in intervals let the healthy cells to heal. Several cycles of drug treatments make up one course of chemotherapy and one course usually lasts for three months or more. Although some cancers might treat well with less recovery intervals in between cycles and this phenomenon is known as dose-dense schedule. Does-dense schedule makes chemotherapy more effective against certain cancers. However, it also increases the possibility of getting side effects. It is better to consult your health care team about choosing a chemotherapy schedule for you. [1]