Cancer treatments and drug therapy options
Cancer treatment aims to stop, slow the progression of, or eliminate cancer. Cancer treatment teams often offer a combination of treatments, depending on the type of cancer, how far it has spread, and what treatments the patient can tolerate. For example, after a surgeon removes most of the tumor, the cancer treatment team may recommend a course of chemotherapy to kill any remaining cancer cells in the body (called systemic treatment) and reduce the risk of recurrence.
drug options
Doctors who specialize in treating cancer, or oncologists, can prescribe a wide variety of medications. These aim to destroy the cancer, prevent its growth, and deprive the cancer of nutrients and blood. Others target some cancer cells or help the immune system identify and fight cancer.
Your oncologist may also combine these treatments. Your cancer care team may also recommend changing drugs within the same drug class if the side effects of treatment are difficult to manage or if your cancer has become resistant to previous chemotherapy. These treatments are repeated several times over several months to give the body the best chance of eliminating the cancer or preventing it from coming back after treatment.
Drug treatment options for cancer include:
- chemotherapy This uses IV drops, injections, creams, or oral medications to destroy cancer cells, but can also damage non-cancerous cells. This can cause side effects such as anemia, hair loss, nausea, and vomiting.
- immunotherapy This treatment uses drugs that help the immune system find and kill cancer cells. Cancer cells can hide from the immune system, but immunotherapy helps the body recognize and destroy them.
- targeted therapy Some cancer cells have specific mutations that make proteins that help cancer cells grow. Targeted therapy drugs block or disable these abnormal proteins. If your cancer cells have one of these specific mutations, your doctor may recommend this type of treatment.
- Hormone therapy This treatment uses hormones to slow or stop the growth of cancer cells. Doctors primarily recommend it for hormone-sensitive cancers, most commonly breast and prostate cancer. Hormone therapy can help reduce the risk that some cancers will come back after surgery.
surgery
Cancer surgeons can perform surgeries to remove tumors and cancerous tissue. Some surgeries may also remove part of the tumor if removing the tumor completely would damage organs, or remove the tumor as part of symptom relief if the tumor is pressing on an organ or causing pain.
The surgeon may perform open surgery, in which the tumor is removed through a large incision, or minimally invasive surgery, in which the tumor is removed through several small incisions using a laparoscope (a long tube with a camera or robotic arm attached to it).
ablation therapy
Your oncologist may recommend using extreme temperatures to kill cancer cells, known as ablative therapy.
In most cases, the cancer treatment team performs ablation therapy to shrink the tumor. This increases survival and reduces symptoms. Ablative therapy options include:
- Cryosurgery or cryotherapy This involves using liquid nitrogen or argon gas to apply extreme cooling to the abnormal tissue, destroying it. It plays a role in the treatment of skin cancer, some eye cancers, and cervical cancer.
- heat therapy Although not yet widely used, thermotherapy exposes small areas of tissue to extremely high temperatures to kill cancer cells or make them more responsive to other treatments. Radiofrequency ablation is a type of thermotherapy that uses high-energy radio waves to generate heat.
- laser surgery These are very precise and use a powerful hot beam of light to cut tissue. It can destroy or shrink tumors and remove benign tumors or precancerous cells that can later become cancerous, often on the surface of the skin or in the lining of organs. Cancer surgeons often use them to treat basal cell carcinoma, abnormal cells in the cervix, cervical cancer, esophageal cancer, vaginal cancer, and lung cancer.
Side effects of ablation therapy vary depending on the location of the cancer, but may include pain and discomfort, bleeding, discomfort, and damage to nearby healthy skin.
radiation therapy
Radiation therapy involves a dose of radiation that destroys cancer cells. Radiation oncologists may request radiation therapy as the only treatment or in conjunction with other treatments. You may receive radiation therapy to kill any remaining cancer cells after surgery.
There are two main types of radiation therapy:
- external beam radiotherapy In the most common type, a radiation oncologist targets the tumor with a machine that produces a beam of high-energy radiation. In most cases, the energy is X-rays, but electrons and protons may also be used.
- internal radiation therapy This places a radiation source inside the body, often to treat cancers of the head, neck, cervix, breast, uterus, or prostate. For brachytherapy, radiation oncologists may place solid radioactive material, or “seeds,” next to the tumor. Systemic therapy uses tablets or intravenous injections of radioactive proteins that recognize and bind to specific cancer cells and emit radiation to them.
Side effects are usually mild and often affect only the part of the body that received radiation. These may include fatigue, diarrhea, and skin irritation.
bone marrow transplant
Also known as a hematopoietic stem cell transplant, this transplant uses cells from bone marrow or peripheral blood to replace cancerous or potentially cancerous immature blood cells with healthy cells. Oncologists may use bone marrow transplants to treat blood cancers that have not improved with other treatments or that have come back after going into remission. In some cases, high doses of chemotherapy can destroy healthy blood cells, so a bone marrow transplant may be part of the treatment plan to rebuild them.
There are two types of bone marrow transplants:
- allogeneic This uses healthy stem cells from a donor with the same blood as you –– Often close relatives.
- autologous This uses healthy stem cells from your own body.
