If you or a loved one has recently been diagnosed with cancer, you're sure to want to know what comes next. The article that follows - which gives a brief overview of the most common forms of cancer treatment - is designed as a starting point from which you can initiate your understanding what to expect over the next few weeks, months, years.
Before we begin, here are a few terms that you will find useful going forward:
? Local Treatment: If your cancer has not spread beyond the originally affected area, it is likely that you will undergo local treatment. This only impacts the affected area.
? Systemic Treatment: If the cancer has spread beyond the initially impacted area, it will be necessary to undergo systemic treatment. This means other
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Surgery
In any cancer case the first priority is to remove the cancerous cells. In some cases this is not always possible, particularly those of acute cancer where the cancerous cells have widely spread. However, in most cases the possibility to remove these cells remains.
Surgery is often considered the best form of cancer treatment, as the tumor can simply be cut away, thus preventing its negative impact as well as continued growth. Surgery is commonly used as a form of local treatment. If a cancer has spread too far, surgery may not be the answer.
A number of surgical operations exist relating to specific forms of cancer. These include hysterectomies (ovarian cancer), mastectomy (breast cancer), castration (testicular cancer), and colonectomy (colon cancer), amongst many others.
2. Radiation Therapy
As with surgery, radiation therapy is generally used in cases of local cancer treatment. The procedure sees a very precise dosage of radiation administered to the affected area via high-energy x-rays. The radiation passes through the cancerous cells, killing each one and preventing further uninhibited
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If a tumor is particularly big, radiation may reduce its size and make it easier for a surgeon to extract.
Radiation can also be used as an adjuvant therapy following surgery, in a bid to prevent cancerous cells returning.
3. Chemotherapy
If there's one form of cancer treatment that most of us have heard of, it's chemotherapy. Whilst many envisage bald and pale cancer sufferers when they think of the word, not all recognize what it is.
Chemotherapy is a course of treatment that involves administering anti-cancer (antineoplastic) drugs either through injection or tablet. These anti-cancer drugs are designed to attack those cells that are growing abnormally. However, there is a major pitfall with these drugs.
Chemotherapy is a systemic form of cancer treatment which means that the drugs impact not only the cancerous cells but also other parts of the body. This is actually why hair loss is a common side effect. Despite its impact on other parts of the body, chemotherapy can lead to a 100 percent clean bill of health.
Like radiation therapy, chemotherapy can be used on an adjuvant or neoadjuvant basis.
4. Targeted
If lymphatic cancer is found treatment is required immediately to get rid of the cancer cells as soon as possible so damage as is not done to normal cells.
Surgery is the most common treatment for all stages of colon cancer. Cancer cells may be removed by one of the below procedures:
2. External Beam Radiation Therapy (EBRT) which is usually offered when the lung cancer is either considered to be primary, or when it has metastasized (spread to other organs). This form of treatment uses a linear accelerator machine to focus a precise beam of radiation on a given area of the body for a precise period of time to kill off cancerous cells.
For example, advanced cancer, or that which has metastasized to different parts of the body, often carries a terminal diagnosis, but it can be treated with chemotherapy, radiation, and surgery. However, this route requires aggressive treatment at the expense of quality of life.
There are essentially three main types of cancer treatments; surgery, chemotherapy, and radiation. Surgery allows doctors to effectively remove tumors from a clear plane. Chemotherapy uses drugs to treat the tumor; but often the drugs affect other healthy cells in the process. Using radiation as a treatment can be either precise or vague. Many health stigmas can come from the vague forms of radiation or conventional radiation therapy. Conventional radiation treats both the unhealthy and healthy cells, therefore exposing healthy cells to harmful radiation (Radiation Oncology, 2011, p.6). When healthy cells are exposed to gamma radiation they are also exposed to ionizing radiation. The ionization can cause “breakage of chemical bonds or oxidization (addition of oxygen atoms)” in a cell; the main impact of this is on a cell’s DNA, if two strands of DNA break it can result in “mutations, chromosome aberrations, ...
Cancer is a disease in which cells multiply out of control and gradually build a mass of tissue called a tumor. There has been a large amount of research dedicated to the treatment and cure of cancer. Several types of treatments have been developed. The following are just some of the major examples of cancer therapy: surgery, chemotherapy, radiation therapy, biologic therapy, biorhythms, unconventional treatments, and hyperthermia. Each type of treatment is discussed in detail below.
Cancer is a method by which normal cells of the body mutate and develop quickly into abnormal cells. As early as the 1880s, the only method of treatment of cancer was a radical surgery. This same method of treatment continued into the 1980s. Before chemotherapy, people were treated with comfort measures, meaning they were given drugs to help relieve the pain until they died. Also, before the 1950s, if you were admitted into a hospital with a cancer that could not be treated with surgery, it was understood you were there to die. In the beginning of the 20th century, treatment for cancer consisted of removing small cancers and those that were easily removed by surgery. Later on, radiation therapy was used to prevent the growth of those tumors that were not removed during surgery; then, chemotherapy was used to remove even smaller tumors that could not be removed by surgery or treated by radiation.
According to the American Cancer Society, many side effects to radiation therapy occur because normal, healthy cells near the treatment area may become damaged. Temporary side effects may include fatigue, skin changes, hair loss, low blood counts, and eating problems. Longer-term disadvantages to radiation therapy consist of potential damage to the tissue, glands and organs near the vicinity of the tumor, the incapacity to destroy tumor cells that remain undetected on imaging scans, the inability to destroy all cancerous cells in the tumor, infertility, scar tissue growth and more. Unfortunately, when radiation therapy is solely used on particular types of cancers, it may not be entirely successful. This rings true especially for specific cancers that have
For cancer patients there are several treatment options. Surgery can remove cancerous tumors, chemotherapy uses drugs for treatment, and radiation therapy. The doctor in charge of the patient’s treatment may also choose to use radiation therapy. “Radiation
...rapy and surgery, its used only if the cancer comes back. Surgery is the treatment of injuries of the body by incision with instruments. Depending on what stage the cancer is in, the patient may need multiple surgeries to completely treat the cancer. For the later stages in the cancer, surgery is the most common treatment. The option to have surgery depends on the size and the location of the cancer. With all this being said, if the cancer is found early enough, there is a better chance of it getting cured. Some patients decide to use either chemotherapy or radiotherapy along with surgery, just to be safe. “For many patients, surgery will be combined with other cancer treatments, such as chemotherapy, radiation therapy or hormone therapy” (Cancer Treatment Centers Of America parag.3). By combining these treatments, there is a better chance of the cancer being cured.
Radiation therapy is the use of “high-energy particles or waves, such as x-rays, gamma rays, electron beams, or protons, used to destroy or damage cancer cells” (Hage 1). The human body consists of a large number of cells which grow and multiply every day, however when cancer cells arise they multiply faster than a normal cell would. Cancer is considered hundreds of different diseases because there are so many types of them and is identified by its abnormal cell growth and ability to migrate throughout the body (Aggarwal). Radiation therapy helps with breaking down cancer cells and eventually kills them, stopping the cell division of these harmful cells. In the attempt to prevent these cancer cells to continue to multiply, healthy cells may also be destroyed but luckily radiation therapy has different methods to target the cells it wants to kill. Ideally, doctors only want to destroy the harmful cells but radiation has
Chemotherapy is the use of chemicals to cure cancer. Chemotherapy is also known as “chemo”. The term for chemo came from the German bacteriologist Paul Ehrlich around the year 1900. He came up with the term when he was examining aniline dyes and arsenicals as possible treatments for diseases such as syphilis. He envisioned “magic bullets” that would be able to target invading organisms but still leave the host unscathed. This goal has been providing therapeutic benefits without many side effects in all areas of drug development. There has been a lot of success with compounds that modulate normal biochemistry within the body.
If one is affected by cancer, there are treatments to help take away this illness affecting their body. This essay is about a specific type of treatment for cancer, radiation therapy. There are different types of forms of particles for radiation, for example, protons and waves like x-rays and visible light. These types of radiations are grouped on how much energy they contain because they can cause different effects. A low type of energy radiation can be radio waves and heat, also known as non-ionizing radiation.
Cancer is a deadly disease that affects millions of American families each year. In cancer, cell division isn't controlled. Usually, cells have to go through a set of checks and balances before they divide, in cancer that is nonexistent. The cells just keep duplicating until they eventually form disorganized clumps called tumors. Tumors can either be, benign, meaning that they do not possess the power to metastasize to surrounding areas. If a tumor has the power to metastasize, it is classified as a malignant tumor. In simple terms, a benign tumor is not cancerous, and a malignant tumor is. Cancer cells cannot perform the necessary functions they were created for. Some types of cancers, like pancreatic cancer, cannot be cured. Other cancers such as melanoma and breast cancer have high survival rates when caught early. The four major types of treatments used to treat cancer include, surgery to remove the affected organ, radiation, chemotherapy, or biological treatments.
For most, the primary fears associated with cancer are connected to the effects of treatments. If the patient is diagnosed when the cancer is still in the early stages, more than likely surgery is the appropriate treatment. However if the cancer has developed into an advanced stage, a more drastic treatment is necessary.