Chemotherapy refers to the treatment of a disease by means of chemicals meant to kill cells, typically cells of micro-organisms or cancer. This treatment works by attacking and killing cells which divide very quickly as cancer cells do. Unfortunately, chemotherapy destroys other cells with a rapid division speed normally encountered with many body functions; this is the case with the cells in the digestive tract, hair follicles and bone marrow.

Hence, the chemotherapy effects usually damage these areas. The most frequent adverse reactions that occur during and after chemotherapy include hair loss, the inflammation of the soft membranes in the digestive tract or mucositis and the decrease of the blood cells production, called myelosupression.

Chemotherapy effects or side effects can classified according to the extent of the adverse reactions into long and short term categories. Negative reactions to the treatment are normal, given the fact that powerful chemicals do disturb the functions of the system. sometimes chemotherapy effects are taken for cancer symptoms. Symptoms are specific to the disease in fact, while the side effects represent natural adverse reactions to a chemical intervention in the body. Anyway, various chemotherapy drugs have different short term and long term side effects; not all chemotherapy drugs lead to every side effect.

Generally speaking, chemotherapy affects those cells that divide at a quicker pace. Chemotherapy will thus affect the bone marrow responsible for blood cells production, the mouth, the intestines, the skin and the hair. Since hair is growing all the time, the skin is constantly renewing itself and the lining of the mouth and digestive system have the same dynamics, then, the cells of all these body tissues must constantly divide to produce a steady supply of new cells. And, unfortunately, it is due to this division process that the chemotherapy drugs attack proper functioning body parts.

Chemotherapy effects and adverse reactions also vary from one patient to another. The intensity of the experience, and their evolution during the treatment depend on many various factors. These elements include the period during which the drug has been taken, the dose or amount of drug, the administration mode, the patient’s general health state, as well as the combination of the chemotherapy drug with other medicines. Some chemotherapy effects represent serious medical conditions which must be dealt with; others, although bothersome, are not necessarily a major threat to the patient’s health. It is also important to discuss the effects of chemotherapy with the doctor and the contact person at the treating center where the patient is given the treatment.

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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 given to the patient after surgery to help prevent any cancerous cells that may have not been completely removed during surgery from developing or increasing in number. 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.

Radiotherapy or regular chemical-based treatments are included in the adjuvant chemotherapy category and they are recommended by the doctors based on some statistical evidence which is employed in order to figure out whether there is low or high risk in relapse for the patient. Statistics indicate 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 objective of the adjuvant chemotherapy is to lengthen the life of the cancer patients.

The types of cancer in which adjuvant chemotherapy is used are quite various and here we may include colon cancer, lung, pancreatic, breast and prostate cancer as well as some forms of gynecological cancers.

Beside the adjuvant chemotherapy, there is also another type of treatment that resembles the former in name; that is, neo-adjuvant chemotherapy. The neo-variant consists in the administration of drugs in the stage preceding the anti-cancer treatment per se. For example, neo-adjuvant chemotherapy may be prescribed to a breast-cancer patient who will undergo breast-removal surgery. The purpose of such a type of therapy is to reduce the size of the tumor so that there are fewer risks and a higher rate of success in the surgical intervention.

All in all, adjuvant chemotherapy is presently considered more rewarding in results when it is used in the aftermath of the operation rather than prior to it. As for the drug efficiency, the level is a lot higher when the treatment is administered intravenously; another way of enhancing drug efficiency is to use it locally in the exact body part attacked by cancer.

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Once a patient is diagnosed with cancer, it is required that the doctor recommend him/her the appropriate types and dosages of cancer chemotherapy drugs. It is highly important that doctors take enough time and display enough patience in talking to the patient suffering from such a serious condition.

The doctor-patient relationship is almost as important nowadays as the suggested cancer chemotherapy is because offering a good treatment without carefully explaining the steps to follow and the potential side effects that may appear along the way may completely discourage the patient. The morale of the individual and the feeling that someone is closely advising and supervising him/her are very important in handling such a burden of an illness.

Cancer chemotherapy was first used in the 1940s when doctors prescribed mostly nitrogen mustards and folic acid as antagonist drugs. With the growing number of tumor cases, cancer chemotherapy has gradually turned into an industry producing an astounding amount of drugs of a huge diversity. Even though one may think that the world has impressively evolved since the 1940s, it is surprisingly enough to mention that most of the principles discovered back then in cancer chemotherapy still apply today.

On certain occasions cancer chemotherapy proves insufficient in the fight against the tumor growth. As a result, the combined chemotherapy regimen may not be sufficient and the doctor may recommend surgery. This procedure is not always one hundred percent certain in removing entirely the tumor and there are still chances that the cancerous cells may reoccur. So doctors and researchers have come up with an adjuvant cancer chemotherapy treatment that relies on drugs meant to prevent the recurrence of cancer and clear away any signs of cancer left after removing the tumor. This cancer chemotherapy adjuvant seems to have really lengthened the life of many patients suffering from colon cancer.

Whether you call it chemotherapy or drugs administration, the process is all the same and so are the risks of adverse reactions and the health threats. There are plenty of categories of cancer chemotherapy drugs, and anyone interested can research on the Internet or in books. Whichever the medium of information, keep in mind the fact that the benefits and the risks brought about by a certain medication have to be carefully investigated and analyzed in the context of a patient’s medical history.

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Breast chemotherapy is the cancer treatment used when the disease has attacked the mammary glands. Its purpose is to kill or to reduce in size the tumor consisting of cells that multiply very quickly compared to the normal rate of multiplication of normal cells. Breast chemotherapy can be of very many kinds depending on the combination of drugs that the doctor has selected for you. Correct information on the way the medication works as well as an analysis of the side effects and the optimistic evaluation factors ought to be part of the discussion between doctor and patient that precedes the treatment as such.

There are two ways of administering breast chemotherapy: orally in cycles established by the doctor or intravenously. The drug passes in the blood and then travels through the entire body attacking cells with a rapid growth rate. Even though breast chemotherapy is directed at breast cancer, the drugs that are recommended as treatment may act on whatever other unhealthy cells that may have already developed somewhere else than the breast. From this perspective doctors call breast chemotherapy a systemic form of treatment precisely because it may act all throughout the patient’s organism.

Breast chemotherapy is often prescribed after mastectomy or lumpectomy and in this case it is known as adjuvant treatment. The patients undergo this type of treatment only when doctors are certain from analyses that cancer has not yet spread to any other parts of the body but the breast.

Another case when breast chemotherapy represents a necessity is when cancer has passed to other parts of the body starting from the lymph nodes. This particular spread is known as metastatic breast cancer and women rarely have this form at the time of the diagnosis.

Is the breast chemotherapy treatment effective or not? Can one tell without a doctor’s opinion? This does not mean however that it is mandatory for you to experience side effects or otherwise your treatment is inefficient. Such an investigation approach is totally incorrect. Adjuvant breast chemotherapy may have no side effects but it has always proved to be very helpful as it impedes unhealthy cells from spreading or redeveloping in your body.

Consequently, breast chemotherapy is no easy treatment. It is probably the devastating treatment and the mutilation brought by breast cancer in itself that has increased awareness among women, making disease detection a lot easier and in the early stages of development.

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