Kinds Of Cancer Treatment
The most common kinds of cancer treatment methods are Chemotherapy, Radiotherapy and surgery. It is very important to know about these kinds of treatments especially if you have someone close to you who is being treated with cancer.
Surgery is normally the first option especially for those cancer growths that can be removed from the body. In some instances, part of the growth can be removed then the remaining part of the cancer can be reduced by chemotherapy and radiation before or after the surgery.
Chemotherapy is a kind of cancer treatment method used by doctors to kill cancer cells. The word chemotherapy, used for this kind of treatment, refers to the administration of drugs by doctors to kill cancer cells. In most cases the drugs are injected into the blood or taken orally. Chemotherapy drugs move through the body through blood to all the parts of the body with cancerous cells.
Radiation is a kind of cancer treatment done by exposing the cancerous part of the body to radioactive substances to kill cancer cells or decrease the size of tumors. The high energy rays used in radiation may come from the outside of the patient’s body( also called external radiation) or radioactive substances can be injected into the tumors in the body( also called internal implant radiation.). Getting external radiation similar to getting an x-ray and it is totally painless. The only problem with the side effects it inflicts on the patient because of tissues that are damaged during radiation.
Other kinds of cancer treatment you are likely to come across are bone marrow transplant, stem cell transplant, immunotherapy, targeted therapy and hormone therapy. Hormonal therapy is commonly used for the the treatment of some kinds of prostrate and breast cancer. Immunotherapy is a kind of cancer treatment that tries to kill cancer by improving the immune system of the patient to fight the cancer. Targeted therapy is designed to target only cancer cells so that there is minimal damage to the healthy cells.
It is best not to compare how different people react to different cancer treatment kinds because people react differently to treatment. There are many different kinds of cancer and doctors get different response to treatment by different patients.
Secondary Effects of Cancer Treatment:
There are short term and long terms side effects of chemotherapy. The short term side effects are vomiting, lose of appetite, sore mouth, nausea and hair loss. Long term side effects come about because chemo may damage the bone marrow where blood is being produced therefore causing shortage in the number of blood cells. All the side effects of chemotherapy usually go away after the treatment.
Radiation therapy is very painless although the patient’s skin might irritate after the treatment. The patients usually feel a little fatigued after the treatment. The feeling of tiredness caused by radiation treatment that goes on for a long time normally does not go away even after enough rest.
Cancer patients need a lot of encouragement when they are going through the treatment because they will become tired and want to quit because they get tired of the side effects of the treatment.
