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Cancer Information Tips :: What Is Chemotherapy
What Is Chemotherapy: What Chemotherapy is in Cancer Prevention
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What is chemotherapy? A lot of people who are suffering from or who have friends or family who are suffering from cancer ask themselves this question.
The dictionary meaning of chemotherapy applies to the use of drugs or chemicals to treat any disease, but it is commonly accepted as a term specific to cancer treatment.
Chemotherapy is a systemic treatment for cancer, unlike radiation and surgery, which are localized treatments.
What is Cancer?
Cancer has to do with your body's cells. When cells are abnormal or mutate and continue to grow and divide at a fast or uncontrollable rate and invade your body's tissue they can form a mass called a tumor.
There are more than a hundred types of cancer. The main categories of cancer are carcinoma, sarcoma, leukemia, lymphoma, myeloma and central nervous system cancers.
Most cancers are named after either the cell where the cancer starts or the organ it attacks.
What Drugs are Used?
The drugs used for chemotherapy differ depending on the cancer that is being treated. There are more than one hundred drugs that can be used in any combination.
The variables that are considered when a doctor determines which combination of drugs will be best suited to a patient's chemotherapy treatment are many. What is chemotherapy worth without knowledge of the specifics, after all?
The types of drugs are determined by the type of cancer a patient has, the stage of the cancer, where in the body it has attacked and how it is affecting the patient's body.
These factors are also considered when the length of the treatments and the dosage of the drugs are being decided.
Chemotherapy vs. Radiotherapy
While chemotherapy and radiotherapy, or radiation treatments, both treat cancer, they do it in very different ways.
Chemotherapy is a systemic treatment which works it's way through your entire body killing cancer cells. Radiotherapy is a local treatment that just treats one specific area with ionizing radiation.
Both chemotherapy and radiotherapy are often used to shrink tumors before surgery. They are often used in harmony.
Can Chemotherapy Cure Cancer?
When asking the question "what is chemotherapy?" the answer will never be "the cure for cancer." There is, of course, no decisive cure for cancer.
However chemotherapy can shrink tumors, stall cancer development and destroy cancer cells to the point where they are undetectable. Chemotherapy is a valuable tool in fighting off cancer.
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