Chemotherapy is a known treatment for many kinds of cancer. Chemotherapy usually refers to the use of drugs or medicines to treat the problem of cancer. A mere thought of cancer, as well as chemotherapy, dreads a number of people. However, knowing what chemotherapy is, how it works as well as what to expect from this treatment could help calm all your fears.
Chemotherapy is considered to be a treatment option for a number of cancers including breast cancer treatment.
According to the cancer hospitals in Delhi, chemotherapy could give you a better sense of control over your on-going cancer treatment.
The overall working of chemotherapy:
According to a cancer hospital in Delhi, chemotherapy works by the way of killing all the rapidly dividing cells in a number of ways, depending on the drug administered by the way of chemotherapy. A number of chemotherapy drugs are designed and developed to target various growth patterns of the cancer cells. Thus, each of these drugs has a different way of working and the same is considered to be effective at a particular time in the life cycle. Chemotherapy works by damaging the DNA, preventing the cells from dividing as well as disrupting the cellular metabolism.
Side effects of chemotherapy:
Chemotherapy works by the way of destroying all the cancer cells present in the time. Unfortunately, this therapy does not know the difference between a healthy cell and a cancer cell. Thus, it destroys all the other healthy cells of the body as well and causes a number of side effects. The major side effects caused as a result of chemotherapy include discomfort, body ache, nausea, inconvenience as well as fatality.
How well does chemotherapy work?
The cancers where chemotherapy works very well include Hodgkin lymphoma and testicular cancer. All the remaining forms of cancers could not be cured by chemotherapy alone. However, a combination of this treatment with other types of treatment can help to treat cancer. With some cancers, if the cure is unlikely, a doctor might still suggest chemotherapy to relieve all the symptoms, shrink cancer, and give you a longer life by controlling cancer and putting the same into remission.
Remission means that after the process of the treatment of cancer, there is no sign of cancer. Complete remission means cancer cannot be detected on scans, blood tests or even X-rays. This is known as a complete response to the treatment of cancer; whereas partial remission means that the treatment has killed some of the cells of cancer, but has not cured it completely. Under a partial remission, cancer gets shrunk; however, it could still be seen on scans and does not appear to be multiplying.
According to a cancer hospital in Delhi, the success rate of chemotherapy for curing cancer totally depends upon cancer that you are suffering from. Patients with some types of cancer can easily experience a cure by the chemotherapy, on the contrary, if a person is suffering from other types of cancer which are more serious in nature, only a few people are cured with the help of this treatment.