Adjuvant Chemotherapy News

Chemotherapy is often the only choice cancer sufferers have to regain a next-to-normal health condition. In oncology, adjuvant chemotherapy will have quite a special role for the patient because it is related to other cancer treatments. Adjuvant chemotherapy is 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 health condition is often susceptible to relapses in cancer cases, since no specialist can foresee the evolution or involution of cancer cells.

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 already been completely cured with the help of the surgery alone. 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.

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.

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 instance, 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 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 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 increasing drug effects is to insert it directly into the part of the body that is affected by cancer.