Chemotherapy
Chemotherapy is a treatment approach that uses potent drugs to destroy cancer cells or to stop or slow their growth. It’s sometimes called systemic therapy because these drugs circulate throughout the body. Depending on various factors, chemotherapy can cure or control your cancer or help ease symptoms you may be having.
Our singular focus on cancer gives doctors at Atal Memorial Cancer Care extensive experience in identifying what makes each person’s cancer unique. If we determine that chemotherapy is the best treatment choice for you, your care team knows which specific drugs will be most effective.
It’s very important to us to preserve your quality of life while you’re in our care. Our doctors and nurses carefully monitor you during and after your treatment.
Because it often works by attacking rapidly dividing cells, chemotherapy can harm healthy cells, such as those that make blood cells or cause your hair to grow, as well as cancerous ones. Damage to healthy cells may cause you to experience side effects during or after your treatment, or both. However, your care team can suggest strategies to minimize or manage those symptoms or adjust the drug or your dosage as necessary. We’re also working to develop new drug-based treatments that not only work better but also have fewer side effects.
Some new alternatives to traditional chemotherapy drugs are now available that more precisely target cancer cells and leave normal cells alone. For example, several immunotherapies and targeted therapies that we and other cancer experts have developed may result in fewer or different side effects.
How Chemotherapy Can Help You
If chemotherapy is a part of your treatment plan, your care team will explain why it’s a good choice for you. For cancers that affect the blood or the lymph system, including leukemia and lymphoma, chemotherapy may be the only treatment option that makes sense. Other reasons for including chemotherapy in your treatment plan include:
Destroying any cancer cells that might be left in your body after radiation or surgery (called adjuvant treatment)
Shrinking tumors before surgery or radiation therapy (called neoadjuvant treatment)
Treating cancer that’s come back (recurred) or spread (metastasized) to other parts of your body
Boosting the effect of radiation therapy
Easing or lessening the intensity of your cancer symptoms by shrinking tumors that are pushing against or putting pressure on parts of your body
Ways to Receive Chemotherapy
We give chemotherapy to patients in several ways. These include:
intravenously (IV), with the drug delivered into your vein through a thin tube called a catheter
orally in the form of tablets, pills, or capsules that you swallow
by injection with a shot in a muscle or below your skin
intrahepatically, with the drug delivered into the hepatic artery, which sends blood directly into the liver
by intraperitoneal injection into the abdominal cavity
intrathecally, with the drug delivered into the fluid-filled space between the thin layers of tissue that cover the brain and spinal cord
Side Effects of Chemotherapy
Because chemotherapy drugs often can’t distinguish between rapidly dividing cancer cells and rapidly dividing healthy cells, they may cause side effects at the same time that they’re fighting your cancer. For example, some people may experience one or more of the following:
anemia
appetite changes
diarrhea
fever
hair loss
infection
infertility
low blood cell counts
mouth sores or changes in taste
nausea and vomiting
urinary incontinence and other urination changes
OTHER SIDE EFFECTS
constipation
fatigue
fluid retention or swelling
constipation
memory or thinking problems
nerve changes or neuropathy (tingling of the fingers and toes)
sexual health issues
weakened heart muscle