Adjuvant Chemotherapy

Cancer patients may have no other choice but to resort to chemotherapy in order to treat their illness. In oncology, adjuvant chemotherapy will have quite a special role for the patient because it is related to other cancer treatments. Adjuvant chemotherapy represents an additional treatment administered to the patient following a surgical intervention as a means to prevent the possible development of the cancer cells that may have remained after the removal. The patient may relapse even if surgery has been performed because unfortunately, medicine is not sufficiently developed to be able to foresee whether cancer cells will reoccur or not.

Chemical-based treatments together with radiotherapy are part of the same adjuvant chemotherapy category prescribed by doctors to stop cancer spread. Statistics show that about a third of the patients who have received adjuvant chemotherapy treatment have resumed good health only through surgical intervention. For those who are not included in the above mentioned third, the long term purpose of the adjuvant chemotherapy is to increase the life extent of the sufferer.

Adjuvant chemotherapy works for lots of cancer typologies from colon cancer to prostrate cancer, lung, breast and pancreatic tumors.

In terms of parallel treatments, adjuvant chemotherapy is complemented by neo-adjuvant chemotherapy. The latter is given to patients before the primary treatment and it may take the form of chemical drug-based treatment. For example, neo-adjuvant chemotherapy may be prescribed to a patient suffering from breast cancer who will undergo breast-removal surgery. The purpose of such a type of therapy is to reduce the tumor size so that there are fewer risks and a higher rate of success in the surgical intervention.

All in all, adjuvant chemotherapy has been identified as more effective when it is prescribed after the tumor removal rather than before it because the remaining cancer cells are fewer in number and, as a result, the drug is more powerful on them. As for the drug efficiency, the level is a lot higher when the treatment is administered intravenously; another way of enhancing drug effects is to insert it directly into the part of the body that is affected by cancer.

Filed Under: Chemotherapy