Cancer and Healthy

Adjuvant chemotherapy is the additional treatment along with drugs used to destroy the leftover cancer cells after the removal of tumors by surgery. It helps to prevent cancer from coming back. This treatment is very effective to treat cancers such as testicular cancer, breast cancer, ovarian cancer etc.

It is very effective treatment, if the chemotherapy drugs are given immediately after the removal of tumor. The patient who received adjuvant chemotherapy tends to live longer. The patients suggested for adjuvant chemotherapy are considered to be having high risk of reappearance of cancer.

For detecting reappearance of cancer the characteristics of tumor are studied. Necessity of adjuvant chemotherapy depends on the size of tumor, proliferation rate and histology. The prognosis is better after the well differentiation of tumor, because the cells look like normal cells.

Adjuvant chemotherapy is very important when the cancer is aggressive. Other prognostic factors such as degree of lymph node are based on the type of cancer. For breast cancer, consideration of lymph node degree is very important.

Cancer that spreads to lymph nodes can easily spread to other parts of the body and it indicates the high risk of cancer reappearance. If there is high level of estrogen and progesterone present, then your care giver or doctors need to decide about whether to treat patient with adjuvant chemotherapy.

Most of the women with primary breast cancer are treated with adjuvant chemotherapy. As within six months after surgery the adjuvant chemotherapy is started, so the preference as well as general health of a patient is important before going to give adjuvant chemotherapy.

Adjuvant chemotherapy done after six months of surgery is less useful than the therapy done in three months as overall period for treatment is also reduced. The intensity of adjuvant chemotherapy depends on the total number of doses given in a week.

During chemotherapy injections of proteins called growth factors may be needed by some patients and these injections help to produce blood cells. Chemotherapy gives some short term and long term side effects such as omitting, hair loss, lower in blood count, nausea, mouth soreness, diarrhea, neurological toxicity, weight gain, fatigue, memory loss, hot flashes menopause etc.