Types Of Chemotherapy
Doctors characterize chemotherapy into several types on the basis of the varied uses of chemotherapy drugs at different times in different ways. Some of these chemotherapy types include:
- Standard or cytotoxic chemotherapy
Standard or cytotoxic chemotherapy involves the use of drugs to effectively target the processes involving the growth and division of cancer cells. Standard chemotherapy destroys the ability of cancer cells to do replication of their DNA. However, chemotherapy drugs are not particularly toxic to cancer cells only but they also harm healthy cells like the cells lining the digestive tract or others surrounding the tumor. The use of cytotoxic or standard chemotherapy therefore causes a lot and often severe side effects. In addition, the side effects might sometimes prevent the patients from taking high doses to potentially fight the cancer.
- Neo-adjuvant chemotherapy
Neo-adjuvant chemotherapy is the cancer treatment that a patient might receive before a main treatment like surgery or radiation to help minimize the size of tumor or destroy cancer cells that are spreading. Neo-adjuvant therapy sometimes also serves as a tool for estimating the response of a patient to other cancer treatments. If the tumor is responding to chemotherapy prior to surgery, a doctor knows that the patient is more likely to respond well.
- Recurrent cancer chemotherapy
Recurrent cancer chemotherapy involves the use of certain medications that kill the cancer cells which come back after treating a tumor before.
- Adjuvant chemotherapy
Adjuvant therapy is the type of chemotherapy that a patient might receive after the primary cancer treatment to kill the remaining cancer cells in the body. If surgical procedure indicates that cancer is present in a great number of lymph nodes, then adjuvant therapy is the effective option to reduce the rising risk of the spread of remaining cancer cells. Furthermore, as certain cancers arise from specific gene mutations with a higher risk of recurrence, adjuvant therapy might be helpful with these types of cancers much better than other cancers that carry a lower risk of recurrence.
- Metastatic cancer chemotherapy
Metastatic cancer therapy involves the killing of cancer which spreads from one part of the body to others, which is known as metastatic cancer.