Side Effects of Chemotherapy

Chemotherapy is a sort of treatment based on various combinations of drugs that are meant to reduce the growth of cancerous cells within a patient’s body. But while following this treatment or so-called therapy, the patient may have to deal with several side effects of chemotherapy.

Hair loss or alopecia is one of the side effects of chemotherapy that is very often encountered in cancer patients although it is false to assume that someone suffering from thinning hair or alopecia is necessarily ill with cancer. Why does hair loss appear to begin with? Well, chemotherapy is a treatment relying on chemicals that are meant either to inhibit or kill the cells that grow or replicate too fast.

The trouble is that the treatment is directed towards all the cells in the body that have this characteristic disregarding whether they are cancer cells or healthy cells. That is why, besides hair loss, many cancer patients may also have to cope with other side effects of chemotherapy related to their digestive system or skin.

Even if this is one of the side effects of chemotherapy that most of us know about, we may not know that alopecia is only temporary. Usually it is not a long term effect and it stops once the treatment is over. After a while, hair will start growing back but its texture and color may be a bit different from what you were used to having before.

True, there are many side effects of chemotherapy and researchers have been doing their best to find ways of preventing them from happening or at least reducing them. In the case of hair loss, prevention is achieved by putting on a cold cap meant to cool the scalp and reduce blood circulation in the area. As a result, the blood will not carry the drug to the hair follicles and this means that one’s hair will be protected from the damage of the drug.

All in all, side effects of chemotherapy are an obstacle and doctors are still trying to reduce their occurrence. Even if one solution to preventing side effects from appearing is available, the same solution may not work for another drug that leads to the same problem. The same goes for hair loss; the cold cap may have the wanted effect of doing away with alopecia only in the case of certain drugs, but it may not work with some other ones.

Stay tuned for the next update!

Introduction to Chemotherapy

Do you realize how painful it is to watch someone dear to you ravished by the fight with cancer? And it all has to do with the perception we have of cancer and with the very intense chemotherapy medication administered to patients diagnosed with this malignant disease. All sorts of treatments and therapeutic approaches are available, but in general lines, it is all reduced to types of chemotherapy.

Lots of solutions are possible starting from the treatment diversity, but each and every one has its challenges. Based on a certain protocol that also involves decision making as to when, how long, how often and under what circumstances the treatment should be applied, the doctor will also choose from the potential types of chemotherapy that which is mostly indicated for a particular case.

The list with the types of chemotherapy drugs is pretty long and it might turn out a bit confusing for those that have never come into contact with chemo until now. It includes alkylating agents chemotherapy, alkaloid-based treatment, anti-tumor antibiotics, antimetabolites, topoisomerase inhibitors, antineoplastics and so on. Each of the categories mentioned above may include tens of types of medication out of which the doctor should select the appropriate ones.

Out of the many types of chemotherapy treatments the doctors will choose one based on a protocol and will take into account when doing so the response rate of a certain patient to the suggested drug. These response rates are established based on research that has been done so far analyzing the treatments that have been applied and their results. For example, the response rate of a combination of drugs selected out of several types of chemotherapy may be of 70% which means that, out of 100, 70 patients with that type of tumor and the same stage of cancer have responded positively to that treatment.

The rest of 30 may not respond at all to the treatment or may have the minimally expected results which are not satisfactory from a medical point of view. In that case the doctor has to act fast and direct the patient to another of the many types of chemotherapy that might have a better effect.

All in all, the choice and application of types of chemotherapy are tricky. Doctors need to constantly monitor and administer tests to their patients in order to make the right decisions at the right time for them. This line of work requires a great deal of responsibility and carries lots of emotional burdens because someone’s life may depend only on the doctor’s decision.