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Chemotherapy

Alt names: Chemo

What is Chemotherapy?

Chemotherapy concerns the use of special cytotoxic drugs to treat cancers
by either killing the cancer cells or slowing their growth. Chemotherapy drugs
travel round the body and attack rapidly growing cells, which may also include
healthy cells in the body as well as cancer cells. However the breaks between
bouts of chemo allow the bodies normal cells to recover before the next course
of chemo.

To travel the body, chemotherapy needs to enter the bloodstream and the quickest
way to do this is intravenously – through a vein or artery. Other methods of
administering chemotherapy may also take the form of intra-muscular injections,
tablets or creams. The way you have chemotherapy depends on a number of
factors including the type of cancer you have and the drugs that you are taking.
Talk with your doctor if you have any questions about your treatment regime.

Some cancers can be treated or cured by chemotherapy alone, while some
treatments may combine chemotherapy with other procedures such as surgery
or radiotherapy – this is known as adjuvant therapy. Adjuvant chemotherapy
can be used before the main treatment to help make the tumour smaller, or
after treatment to kill residual cancer cells that may cause problems later in
treatment.

In some instances chemotherapy may not be able to control the cancer but
may be used to relieve symptoms such as pain and help you lead as normal
a life as is possible.

There are many different combinations of chemotherapy used to treat various
cancers, and these may have different affects on different people.

Side Effects of Chemotherapy

While chemotherapy is useful for the killing of cancer cells in the body, as with
most other treatments patients may experience side effects from the chemotherapy.
These side effects vary from treatment to treatment and from person to person
but fortunately these problems may disappear with time or be managed to reduce
the impact that they may cause.

The most common side effects are nausea and vomiting, fatigue (tiredness),
alopecia (hair loss), muscular, nerve and blood effects as well as bowel
(constipation or diarrhea) and oral problems.

It is important that you tell the doctors and nurses if you are experiencing
any side effects from your treatment so that they can discuss an appropriate
course of action with you.