How is cancer treated?

How is cancer treated?

How cancer treated

The three major types of treatment traditionally have
been surgery, radiation therapy, and chemotherapy.
Surgery, which treats cancer by removing the cancerous
tissue from the body (most often by cutting), is the
oldest form of treatment. In the past, it was referred to
as the “gold standard” of treatment because it was
believed to be the treatment that most often led to a
cure. Surgery, however, is not a treatment option for
many cancers, such as leukemia and other blood cancers,
or when the disease has spread throughout the
body. And for other cancers such as prostate cancer,
other treatments such as radiation therapy have been
shown to be equally effective.

Surgery = Removal of a tumor, organ(s), or other
objects from the body and/or repair of body parts using
specific resection techniques.

Radiation therapy = Used in both diagnosis
and treatment, the application of light, short radio
waves, ultraviolet rays, or X-rays upon a specific area
of the body for a period of time.

Chemotherapy = Also called “chemo.” Treatment of
disease using chemical substances or drugs.

Radiation therapy, like surgery, targets specific areas in
the body to treat. It employs high energy rays or subatomic
particles that damage the DNA of cancer cells
and interfere with their growth, thereby shrinking the
tumor, or eliminating it entirely. Chemotherapy also
works by interfering with the growth and reproduction
of cancer cells, but instead of radiation therapy, it uses
toxic medications, the anticancer drugs. Chemotherapy
differs from radiation therapy and surgery because it is
most often a systemic therapy: instead of treating a part
of the body, it treats cancer throughout the body.With
all three major therapies—surgery, radiation therapy,
and chemotherapy—a major issue has always been how
to spare healthy tissue from the strong effects of the
treatment; in other words, coping with the side effects.
People equate chemotherapy, in particular, with nausea
and hair loss, or radiation therapy with fatigue, but
depending on the specific treatments—what medications
are used or how the radiation therapy is administered—
side effects can be controlled or reduced, or they
may not even occur at all.

In recent years promising new approaches to cancer
treatment have been developed. One is immunotherapy
or biological therapy, which utilizes parts of the
body’s own immune system to fight the disease. Some
examples of biological therapy include monoclonal
antibodies (which attach themselves to the surface of
cancer cells and interfere with their functioning) and
the development of some experimental cancer vaccines
that may be able to treat (as opposed to prevent) cancers
in the near future. Gene therapy, on the other
hand, attempts to fix cancer cells by replacing their
missing or abnormal genes with normal ones, or
blocking the genes that are important to the function
or growth of the cancer cell. Antiangiogenesis therapy
is another type of treatment that focuses on blocking
the growth of new blood vessels to cancerous
tumors, which they need to survive. What all these
new “targeted” therapies share is a much more precise
approach to attacking the cancer, one that attempts to
minimize the unintentional harm to healthy cells and
tissues by “targeting” specific parts of cancer cells or
proteins that contribute to their growth.

Antiangiogenesis = therapy Experimental cancer
treatment that focuses on blocking growth of new blood
vessels to tumors.

There is continual refinement of the three traditional
modes of treatment (surgery, radiation therapy, and
chemotherapy). Together with the promise of the new
approaches just outlined, there is a greater sense of
hope around the treatment and cure of cancer than
there ever has been before. Now, cancer is not the
“dreaded disease” of the past that many people equated
with death. Even though more cancer treatments exist
and many types of cancer are being treated more effectively
with greater chance of cure, the fact remains that
many cancers still come with poor prognoses. Even
when treatments make it possible to think of some
cancers as chronic conditions, these treatments can still
challenge patients—as well as their families and
friends—with their physical, emotional, and social
demands. It is our belief that these challenges are met,
in large part, through the education and support of the
caregivers of the person with cancer.

Caregiver = One who helps another person with
a serious illness do what he or she ordinarily
would be able to do to meet both current and future needs.