1.What is chemotherapy?
Chemotherapy is short for chemotherapy, which is used to kill cancer cells to achieve the purpose of treatment.
Chemotherapy is one of the most effective treatments for cancer, and is one of the three major treatments for cancer, together with surgery and radiotherapy. Surgery and radiotherapy are local treatments, which are only effective for tumors at the treatment site. It is difficult to effectively treat potential metastatic lesions (cancer cells that have actually metastasized but cannot be detected and detected clinically due to the limitations of current technology) and cancers that have already metastasized clinically. Chemotherapy is a systemic treatment, regardless of the route of administration (oral, intravenous and body cavity administration, etc.), chemotherapeutic drugs will spread to most organs and tissues throughout the body with blood circulation, therefore, chemotherapy is the main treatment for some tumors that have the tendency to spread throughout the body and for mid- to late-stage tumors that have metastasized.
2. Classification of chemotherapy
(1) Radical chemotherapy.
Some cancers that are sensitive to chemotherapy drugs, such as leukemia and lymphoma, choriocapillary epithelial carcinoma and germ cell malignant tumors, may be cured by simple chemotherapy, and this kind of chemotherapy aiming at curing the cancer is called radical chemotherapy.
(2) Palliative chemotherapy.
Most of the advanced cancer cells have metastasized extensively and it is impossible to be cured at this stage of technology. The purpose of chemotherapy is mainly to control the development of cancer to prolong the patient’s life or to improve the patient’s survival quality through chemotherapy, and this kind of chemotherapy is called palliative chemotherapy.
(3) Post-operative adjuvant chemotherapy.
Although the mass has been surgically removed, potential metastases that are not clinically detectable may occur before surgery, or a small amount of cancer cells may be shed around the surgical wound. The purpose of killing these residual cancer cells through chemotherapy is to prevent cancer recurrence and metastasis.
(4) Pre-operative chemotherapy (neoadjuvant chemotherapy).
Pre-operative chemotherapy can shrink lesions to facilitate surgical resection, or shrink lesions that have lost the chance of surgery and then get the chance of surgery, and also kill potential metastatic lesions to reduce the possibility of recurrence and metastasis.
(5) Intracavitary chemotherapy.
Through intracorporeal drug delivery (such as intra-abdominal and intra-thoracic drug delivery), to temporarily maintain a higher local drug concentration in the body cavity, to achieve the purpose of improving local efficacy.
3.When is chemotherapy needed?
When you have cancer, what is the need to choose chemotherapy and what plan to choose? This question is highly specialized and should be determined by oncologists according to the specific conditions of patients. Broadly speaking, chemotherapy should be done in the following cases.
(1) Malignant tumors that are sensitive to chemotherapy and treated mainly with chemotherapy may be cured by standardized chemotherapy. For example, small cell lung cancer, leukemia, malignant lymphoma, choriocarcinoma, germ cell malignancies, etc.
(2) Sensitive or relatively sensitive malignant tumors, chemotherapy before or after surgery.
(3) Palliative chemotherapy for advanced malignant tumors.
4.What are the side effects of chemotherapy?
Chemotherapy drugs are cytotoxic drugs, and some toxic side effects may occur in one way or another, the most common ones are
(1) Digestive system reaction: such as nausea, vomiting, diarrhea and stool secretion. Among them, nausea and vomiting is one of the most common reactions to chemotherapy. In recent years, some powerful and effective antiemetic drugs have been marketed, which have greatly reduced the nausea and vomiting reactions after chemotherapy.
(2) Bone marrow suppression: such as leukopenia and thrombocytopenia. Generally, it will recover on its own 1 to 2 weeks after stopping chemotherapy. Some of the more serious myelosuppression can also be effectively boosted by leukemia and platelet drugs available, so there is no need to worry.
(3) Hair loss: Some chemotherapy drugs may cause hair loss, but hair loss is reversible and new hair will grow back after stopping chemotherapy.
(4) Other, such as liver and kidney function impairment, etc.
Most of the reactions and toxic side effects of chemotherapy are reversible and can be controlled or reduced through the use of some adjuvant drugs. However, chemotherapy is after all a more intense treatment, therefore, clinicians should strictly grasp the indications for chemotherapy, standardize and rationalize the chemotherapy program and take the necessary preventive measures.
5.What conditions are not suitable for chemotherapy?
(1) The patient’s physical condition is too poor or too old to withstand chemotherapy.
(2) Those with serious organ dysfunction (e.g. serious liver and kidney dysfunction).
(3) Early stage cancer (e.g. carcinoma in situ and stage I cancer) that has been successfully removed surgically does not require chemotherapy.
(4) Those who have developed resistance to chemotherapy after repeated chemotherapy and are still ineffective after changing chemotherapy regimens should choose other treatments.
(5) A few cancers are not sensitive to chemotherapy drugs and chemotherapy is not effective.