Chemotherapy is an effective treatment for breast cancer, but there are also some adverse reactions during treatment. Here are some answers to common problems in chemotherapy, hoping to help such patients. During chemotherapy for breast cancer, the most frequent and obvious adverse reaction – nausea and vomiting. Most chemotherapy patients will have this gastrointestinal adverse effect, and some chemotherapy regimens will be more pronounced. If the patient is only nauseated and not vomiting, this can be relieved by adjusting the diet – eating light, easily digestible foods and eating small, frequent meals. If the patient vomits violently (even with water), at this point I would recommend that the patient fast after chemotherapy and seek medical help, which can be changed to intravenous fluids – supplementing with glucose and saline for a short period of time with daily physiologic requirements; if the vomiting persists for a long time, nutritional preparations will need to be entered (requiring a doctor’s prescription). For patients who have already vomited, it is often difficult to control and can only be coped with calmly. Generally, the symptoms will disappear in about two days after chemotherapy, and patients should try to stand in an upright position when vomiting to prevent asphyxiation caused by inhalation of vomit, and patients need to rinse their mouths to keep them clean after vomiting. What can be done to prevent and reduce the chances of vomiting? First, vomiting is a complex central nervous system response. There is a vomiting center in the human brain that is associated with a person’s emotions, so doctors give patients pentraxin receptor blockers that control the neurological response to prevent vomiting before chemotherapy. However, it is emphasized that antiemetics must be used under the guidance of a physician and should not be used on their own. Secondly, some patients will have a conditioned reflex to the drug or hospital – they will start vomiting as soon as they enter the hospital or see the drug. It is recommended that such patients should keep a calm mood when doing chemotherapy; some chemotherapy drugs are colored, such as red and yellow, which are more eye-catching, and it is better for patients not to look at them to avoid a conditioned reflex. What about hair loss during chemotherapy? First of all, it should be clear that hair loss during chemotherapy, after the end of the course of treatment, the vast majority of patients can grow out again. Hair loss is a common adverse reaction to many chemotherapy drugs, the most fundamental way to prevent hair loss is – if you can choose, try to use drugs that have little impact on the hair; second, some theories believe that the damage to hair follicle cells during chemotherapy drugs is a major cause of hair loss, so some studies have found that wearing an ice cap on the head during chemotherapy to keep the scalp Therefore, some studies found that wearing an ice cap on the head during chemotherapy to maintain the low temperature of the scalp can make the scalp blood vessels constrict, which will make the damage of the drugs to the hair follicles smaller, and hair loss may be improved. Of course, if the patient has a requirement for appearance during chemotherapy, wearing a wig is fine and has no effect on chemotherapy. Pay attention to ulcers during chemotherapy. Oral ulcers or mucosal ulcers are a very common side effect of chemotherapy. Ulcers can appear in the mucous membranes of various parts of the body, including the mouth and the digestive tract. If the patient has oral ulcers but can eat normally, we ask the patient to pay attention to oral hygiene in this case; however, if the oral ulcers have affected eating, it is necessary to go to the hospital stomatology department and ask the stomatologist to check and use oral rinse if necessary. Patients with peptic mucosal ulcers may experience diarrhea and abdominal pain. If the diarrhea does not exceed three times a day, it is mild diarrhea, and it is enough to pay attention to replenish the lost water and electrolytes; if the diarrhea exceeds three times a day, it is necessary to go to the hospital for examination to clarify the cause of diarrhea – whether it is caused by viral or bacterial infection, or osmotic diarrhea caused by mucosal damage due to chemotherapy, and make appropriate Treatment should be tailored to the cause (antibiotics if there is a co-infection, hydration and electrolyte replacement, etc.). Numbness in the hands and feet may occur during chemotherapy due to the neurotoxic effects of chemotherapy drugs (e.g., paclitaxel). These drugs affect the peripheral nerves – especially the sensory nerves – causing the patient to feel numbness in the hands and feet, and in severe cases, even to hold a pencil and write. But so far there is no good way to deal with this side effect, and there are only ways to prevent or mitigate it, such as adding neurotrophic drugs like vitamin B to the choice of such drugs. However, as chemotherapy ends, the human body will repair itself and most patients’ symptoms will gradually disappear. A small number of patients may still feel numbness in some areas, but it is mostly mild and not too serious. Liver function impairment is also a common adverse effect of chemotherapy. This is because most of the drugs are excreted through the liver, which will have an effect on the liver. If abnormal liver function is found, which is the most common result of ALT (glutamic aminotransferase) and AST (glutamic oxalacetic aminotransferase), both of which are above normal values, suggesting possible liver damage, then the patient needs to communicate with the doctor, who will ultimately decide whether chemotherapy needs to be stopped. If the patient is a carrier of hepatitis B virus or a hepatitis patient, it is important to communicate with the doctor before chemotherapy and make sure that the liver disease is stabilized before chemotherapy is administered. In addition to the side effects mentioned above, chemotherapy can also suppress the patient’s bone marrow, most commonly in the form of lowered white blood cells. As we all know, bone marrow is an important blood-forming organ for adults, and red blood cells, white blood cells and platelets are all produced by bone marrow, and these cells, especially white blood cells, have a short life span of only 6 to 8 hours. The “short-lived” cells need to keep proliferating, but chemotherapy drugs “think” that the fast-growing cells are tumors and should be killed, so the decline of white blood cells after chemotherapy is a common side effect, medically called myelosuppression, mainly manifested by feeling weak. Generally, the presence of myelosuppression can be determined by blood check (taking the patient’s finger blood or venous blood for whole blood cell analysis), and if the patient’s white blood cell count is seen to drop – especially neutrophils – the patient is judged to be myelosuppressed. Depending on the degree of white blood cell decline, the doctor will take different treatments – if the myelosuppression is mild, it is usually sufficient to take some Chinese medicine or common drugs to improve hematopoiesis; if the myelosuppression is more severe, it is necessary to give injections (called leukostimulation injection, or colony-stimulating factor) to increase the number of white blood cells If the bone marrow suppression is more severe, it is necessary to give injections (called colony-stimulating factor) to increase the number of white blood cells, so as to pass the dangerous period of low white blood cells after chemotherapy. Each patient is different, so the management of myelosuppression varies from person to person. Effect of chemotherapy on menstruation. Whether or not you menstruate during chemotherapy has no effect on the chemotherapy itself, but chemotherapy does have an effect on the patient’s menstruation. This is usually a transient amenorrhea caused by chemotherapy. After chemotherapy is stopped, the function of the ovaries will gradually recover, and eventually menstruation will return; however, in some older patients, menstruation is already irregular before chemotherapy and no longer occurs after chemotherapy, which may be menopause. This is because the patient’s ovaries had already started to fail before chemotherapy, and chemotherapy caused further loss of ovarian function, which eventually caused the patient to go through menopause.