How Does Chemotherapy Work?
Chemotherapy is less likely to destroy the cells which are at rest like the most normal cells surrounding the cancerous cells. A patient might have a combination of several chemotherapy drugs to ensure the damage to cancer cells. The combination might include drugs that destroy cancer cells at various stages during the process of cell division. Therefore, chemotherapy promises more chances of destroying cancer cells in comparison to the other cancer treatments like radiation therapy or surgery.
Chemotherapy primarily helps in:
- Reducing the possibility of cancer spreading
- Reducing current symptoms
- Lowering the total number of cancerous cells in the body
- Shrinking tumor size
Besides treating cancer, chemotherapy also ensures to kill any lingering and spreading cancer cells as well. In case of lumpectomy for breast cancer patients, the oncologist might suggest chemotherapy after the surgical procedure to avoid the likelihood of cancer remission. Moreover, chemotherapy also prepares patients for other treatments like radiation therapy by shrinking the size of a tumor. Chemotherapy also helps in relieving pain for patients with late-stage cancer. In addition, chemotherapy also treats bone marrow diseases or other immune system disorders by preparing the patients for invasive surgical treatments like bone marrow stem cell treatment.
Chemotherapy drugs circulate throughout the body by entering into the bloodstream. By circulating in bloodstream chemotherapy drugs can destroy cancer cells at almost anywhere in the body and this is known as systemic cancer treatment. Chemotherapy is a treatment that treats cancer cells by first splitting the cancer cell into two cells and then killing them both. The tissues in body consist of billions of single cells. Once, a person grows up fully, majority of the body cells do not multiply and divide a lot. Body cells only divide if there is a need of repairing some damage. When individual cells divide, they break down into two identical cells thus there is an increase in the number of cells from the split up of a single cell.