What is chemotherapy treatment? How does it work? Chemotherapy is the treatment of cancer with drugs that kill rapidly dividing cells. Cancer is a disease where cells in the body become abnormal and start to grow uncontrollably, invading nearby tissue. Chemotherapy treatment can be used effectively to treat cancer because chemotherapy drugs attacks and kills these cancerous cells.
Unfortunately, scientists have not yet found ways to target only malignant cancer cells. This means that the same chemotherapeutic drugs that kill rapidly dividing cancer cells also harm rapidly dividing cells that are part of our healthy body, including bone marrow cells, cells in our digestive tract, and hair follicles. This is the reason for some of the most common side effects of Chemotherapy, including hair loss, inflammation of the digestive tract lining and decreased production of blood cells.
How Is Chemotherapy Treatment Given? – What Is Chemotherapy
Chemo drugs are taken either orally or via injection. The drugs given and the dosage will depend on the type of cancer, as well as other factors specific to you. The patient may receive only one drug, which is known as monothreapy, or the patient may receive a combination of drugs, which is known as combination therapy.
What Is Chemo: What Is Chemotherapy Like?
What is chemotherapy like? This is can be a scary question for cancer patients facing chemotherapy for the first time as well as their loved ones. Most people faced with chemotherapy treatment are immediately fearful of the side effects of chemotherapy. One positive for patients faced with a cancer diagnosis is that the management of the side effects of chemo have greatly improved over the last 20 years.
However, there is still no way to know how a specific patient will react to chemotherapy treatment. The side effects of chemotherapy and experiences of the patient will vary greatly depending on the stage of the cancer, the type of cancer, and factors specific to each patient. Some patients actually experience very mild side effects, some even no side effects at all. Others will report a range of side effects and varied discomfort. For more information about the side effects of chemotherapy, read our article “What are the side effects of chemotherapy?” by clicking here.
Chemotherapy treatments are administered over a specific period of time, based on a protocol plan that schedules treatment sessions and the duration of the course of treatment. A course of treatment may be just 1 day, or may be a few weeks.
If more chemo treatments are required, the patient is given a rest period before the following treatment. This cycle will usually be repeated many times, with adjustments being made depending on the stage of the cancer and the type of cancer, and how the patient is responding to treatment.
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