Chemotherapy protocol is a concept familiar to cancer patients, but it remains totally unknown to people who do not have any direct or indirect contact with the disease. The chemotherapy protocol consists of all the procedures and medicine specificity, the expected results, the potential threats and the side effects related to the medication. This protocol is to be used as a sort of guide or reference throughout the prescribed treatment.

To get down to more details, the chemotherapy protocol involves all the case circumstances, meaning that it should specify the pathology type that the treatment has been prescribed for (the location of cancer, the cancer stage, and so on). It should also include indications and contraindications, it should refer to all the situations that allow or forbid its applications and it ought to refer to specialized literature for whatever sort of clarifications may be needed throughout the treatment.

Another important part of the chemotherapy protocol is to include information and clear description of the drugs that the patient will take. Drug information will have to refer here to the dosage which is usually established depending on the patient’s body weight, surface, the appropriate concentration to be found in the blood, and so on. Other details in the chemotherapy protocol include info on cyclical administration and the time interval between doses.

Moreover, the chemotherapy protocol should specify how the drug is to be administered, that is, the route of administration, as doctors refer to it (oral, intravenous, abdominal, etc). Under certain circumstances adjuvant treatment may be required which represents another piece of information that has to be specified in the chemotherapy protocol together with possible precautions and measures.

Finally, the chemotherapy protocol needs to tackle with the cycles of the treatment. Such details cover the intervals that separate different cures as well as the concentration variation in the medication. The protocol should further determine how many cycles are necessary, whether the toxicity of the drugs represents a health risk, the level of recovery after every cycle of the treatment and so on.

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Technorati Tags: cancer, Chemotherapy, Health, therapy, treatment

What is oral chemotherapy? The term refers to the way of administering chemotherapy, namely taking chemo drugs by mouth. Chemotherapy is medicine used in treating cancer and the ways to apply it are multiple. Nowadays, oral chemotherapy is not the only option cancer patients have, as science has come up with other ways of medicine administration adequate for a patient’s condition.

Thus any drug that can be taken by mouth to treat cancer belongs to oral chemotherapy. The health impact of pills remains identical to that of intravenous medication for instance, with the specification that they are more likely to trigger adverse reactions because of the impact on the digestive tract.

Some chemotherapy drugs can never be taken orally as they cannot be absorbed in the stomach or they can cause harm if swollen. So as to avoid side effects, many anti-cancer drugs are administered intravenously through a line. In the case of oral chemotherapy, the treatment is more facile as the patient can do it at home, without being forced to go to hospital every time it is applied.

A good way to organize oral chemotherapy is in cycles of administration. Thus, risk of damaging normal healthy cells gets lower and the drugs only target the cancerous formations. Obviously, it is for the doctor to establish the periodicity of the treatment whether daily, weekly or monthly. Anyway, the anti-cancer treatment scheme proposed by the specialist ought to be discussed with the patient so that she/he may know what lies ahead in terms of challenges, difficulties and success rate.

Only when one informed and convinced of the efficiency of the treatment, can one decide to begin it. Even if oral chemotherapy drugs have a lower intensity in terms of adverse reactions and impact on the stomach, side effect do exist.

The list of oral chemotherapy adverse reactions is very long and it generally includes fatigue, nausea, vomiting, anemia, flu-like symptoms, diarrhea and constipation, increased susceptibility to infections, kidney malfunctions, hair loss and various other sores and pains. For any of these side effects it is advisable that patients address their doctors for advice and help.

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Technorati Tags: cancer, Chemotherapy, Health, therapy, treatment

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 remedies and therapeutic approaches have been developed, but in general lines, it is all reduced to types of chemotherapy.

Challenges are present within any solution meant to treat cancer. When choosing one from the several types of chemotherapy, the doctor takes into account the location of the tumor, its size, the stage of the disease and the health condition of the patient.

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 count tens of types of medication out of which the doctor should select the appropriate ones.

From the many types of chemotherapy treatments the doctors determine the suitable one starting from a disease protocol specific to every patient in particular that mentions his/her reaction to the treatment. These response rates are established based on research that has been done so far analyzing the treatments that have been applied and their results. Statistically speaking if the response rate of a group of patients is 70% during the treatment for a certain drug, it means that only seventy subjects have registered positive results under the action of a particular medication.

The response rate may have been minimum or non-existent in the remaining thirty patients. Other types of chemotherapy will be administered immediately if an individual fails to respond to one of them.

To sum it up, the choice and application of types of chemotherapy are tricky. Doctors should constantly test and monitor their patients in order to make the most advantageous of decisions at crucial moments in the evolution of the disease. 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.

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Technorati Tags: cancer, Chemotherapy, Health, therapy, treatment

Melanoma is a type of cancer that affects the skin and is recognized by the dark spots that appear on the dermis. In order to treat melanoma, diagnostic tests must first be completed and then the cancer team will be able to recommend one or maybe more treatment options. Melanoma chemotherapy represents a first option to fight skin cancer. Anyway, patients should analyze all treatment variants extensively by learning all the can on the implications. First of all, patients ought  to understand everything about the treatments. The procedure will normally be established depending on the disease evolution and the thickness of the primary tumor.

Surgery and melanoma chemotherapy represent the main alternatives here. There are different choices in as far as surgery is concerned, depending on where and how advanced the melanoma is. Thus there are lymph node dissection, re-excision and amputation to decide on. Unfortunately, if besides melanoma, the cancer has spread to organs as well, surgery will not be the solution. Therefore, melanoma chemotherapy could represent the most viable of possibilities. Systemic chemotherapy that the procedure involves uses injectable anticancer drugs.

Drugs are either administered intravenously or orally. Melanoma chemotherapy drugs travel through the bloodstream to all parts of the body. The direct impact of the active substances will be on the cancer cells affecting skin, organs and lymph nodes. The same medication that kills the tumor will also damage some healthy tissues too. Among these normal cells that can be killed are blood-producing cells of the bone marrow, cells that line the gastrointestinal tract and cells of hair follicles. As a result, patients will go through temporary side effects like nausea and vomiting, mouth sores, loss of appetite and loss of hair.

Melanoma chemotherapy drugs include temozolomide, cisplatin, vinblastine, DTIC, BCNU and tamoxifen. DTIC can be used alone or with other chemotherapy drugs like BCNU and cisplatin. DTIC, BCNU and cisplatin combined with tamoxifen, which is a hormonal medication commonly used in treating breast cancer, are known as the Dartmouth Regimen. Then melanoma is also treated by a combination of vinblastine, cisplastin and DTIC. Temozolomide is a newer medicine, whose mode of function is similar to that of DTIC, except that it is used in the form of a pill.

Since melanoma chemotherapy drugs have a damaging impact on normal blood cells as well, patients might experience low blood cell counts and this can reduce the blood clotting speed for instance, fatigue (experienced because of the anemia and the medical treatment in itself) and an increased chance of infection (because the number of blood cells drops too).

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Technorati Tags: cancer, Chemotherapy, Health, therapy, treatment

Chemotherapy as the drug-based cancer treatment involves the elimination of the disease by stopping cancer cells from division. This treatment works by attacking and killing cells which divide very quickly as cancer cells do. Unfortunately, chemotherapy damages cells that have a rapid division process normally encountered with many body functions; this is the case with the cells in the digestive tract, hair follicles and bone marrow.

Hence, the chemotherapy effects usually damage these areas. The most common adverse reactions that occur during and after chemotherapy include myelosuppresion – decrease in the production of blood cells, mucositis – inflammation of the lining of the digestive tract, and alopecia – hair loss.

Chemotherapy effects or side effects can be divided into two major groups as short and long term. Negative reactions to the treatment are normal, given the fact that  powerful chemicals do disturb the functions of the system. It is not difficult to confuse drug side effects with cancer symptoms.

Symptoms characterize the disease in fact, while the side effects consist of natural adverse reactions to a chemical invasion in the body. Side effects vary depending on the type of drugs used in the treatment, with the mention that one single form of medication will not trigger all the possible adverse reactions in a patient.

In more general terms, chemotherapy affects those cells with a faster division. Chemotherapy will thus affect the bone marrow responsible for blood cells production, the mouth, the intestines, the skin and the hair. If the skin renews itself constantly, the hair grows permanently and the lining of the mouth and digestive system have the same dynamics, then, the cells of all these body tissues must constantly divide to produce a steady supply of new cells. And, unfortunately, it is due to this division process that the chemotherapy drugs attack proper functioning body parts.

It is known that most drugs used in chemotherapy have side effects, yet, not all the patients get the same chemotherapy effects. The way one goes through chemotherapy therefore differs immensely, depending on some factors specific to every case. These elements refer to the period of drug administration, the dose or amount of drug, the administration mode, the patient’s overall health condition, as well as the combination of the chemotherapy drug with other medicines.

Some chemotherapy effects are serious medical conditions which require professional help; others, although bothersome, are not necessarily a major threat to the patient’s health. It is also relevant to discuss the effects of chemotherapy with the doctor and the contact person at the treating center where the patient is given the treatment.

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Technorati Tags: cancer, Chemotherapy, Health, therapy, treatment

Chemotherapy hair loss is one of the numerous effects of this cancer treatment. What is the reason why hair loss occurs during chemotherapy? Well, the drugs used in this type of cancer treatment are very strong, therefore very efficient in attacking the rapidly developing cancer cells. There are normal body cells with a rapid growth rate, and they are not cancer; the cells in the digestive tract and the hair follicles are the main examples here. The effects of chemotherapy on hair are manifest for all the body parts covered by hair. Unfortunately, eyelashes, eyebrows, armpit and pubic hair and other body hair may also fall out.

There is a wide variety of drugs that are used in chemotherapy. Some of these will trigger chemotherapy hair loss more quickly than others, but some may not even cause such a side effect. The difference in chemotherapy drug doses is another aspect to consider when hair loss is under discussion, as hair loss ranges from thinning to complete baldness. Thus, discussing the medication that will be prescribed with the doctor and nurse is very important as they are the specialists able to inform the patient on what to expect from chemotherapy.

In most cases you’ll start losing hair within ten or fourteen days after you start chemotherapy. It may fall out quite fast, gradually or in clumps. Hair loss usually continues throughout the treatment and even one month after it. Half the hair will be gone without one even noticing.

Luckily, in most cases, chemotherapy hair loss is a temporary effect. Hair will probably grow again within six months to one year after the cessation of the treatment. The new hair could have a slightly different shade of color, with the mention that even the texture could be altered too.

It usually takes about four to six weeks for the hair to recover from chemotherapy, and the growth rate will be somewhere around a quarter inch per month. The changes that took place in the hair follicles during chemotherapy will be obvious in the way the hair grows back, but in time, things will get back to normal.

The changes will stop and the hair will recover the look previous to the treatment the moment the cells that control the hair pigment begin working again. Unfortunately, one cannot prevent chemotherapy hair loss as there is no treatment which will guarantee that the hair will not fall out.

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Technorati Tags: cancer, Chemotherapy, hair_loss, Health, therapy

Cancer is the twentieth century greatest enemy of all besides AIDS. Lots of people have become direct or indirect victims to this illness, either by suffering from the condition or by having someone dear to them devastated by tumor development. Knowing what cancer patients go through during chemotherapy is very difficult but informative materials may get you a bit closer to supporting someone in sufferance. To begin with, chemotherapy side effects make aspects that patients deal with and find very difficult to handle.

Chemotherapy side effects are very numerous and vary in strength depending on the dosage of drugs and the length of the treatment. Most chemotherapy side effects are short term ones as they decrease in intensity and eventually stop after a certain period of time. Very rarely, there are encountered some effects that are long term or that may appear only years after following a certain treatment.

If you were interested in finding out more about the chemotherapy side effects of various treatments or combinations of drugs, you should know that there are a great deal of sources providing you with relevant information helpful in alleviating and understanding the pain the patient goes through. The list with potential chemotherapy side effects is about 200 items long and it includes such effects as abdominal pain, dizziness, nausea, chills, cardio-toxicity, edema, eye problems, lack of appetite, weight gain or loss, memory loss, leukemia, infections of various types in various parts of the body, nose bleeds, pulmonary embolus, pneumonia, rapid heartbeat, water retention, and so on.

Going through such a list will surely turn out quite discouraging but you ought to know that these chemotherapy side effects will not appear all at once and in the same patient. They are each specific to a certain type of cancer and are definitely related to the type of drug or combination of drugs that the doctor has recommended as treatment.

Normally, patients should be informed by their doctors on the possible chemotherapy side effects and their persistence at the end of the treatment. Explaining what the patient will go through constitutes an essential preparatory stage as this will avoid having the patient panic about something that is usually associated with certain drugs. Most often, doctors consult their patients about the treatment they are to prescribe and may give patients options between treatments presenting the specific chemotherapy side effects and balancing them altogether.

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Technorati Tags: cancer, Chemotherapy, Health, therapy, treatment

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 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 these represent the side effects of chemotherapy that most people are familiar with, few really have a clue about the temporary nature of such side effects. At the end of the treatment the hair follicles will resume normal functionality. 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.

There are a few side effects of chemotherapy to say the least, but their intensity could be reduced. 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 remain numerous and scientists do their best to discover ways to reduce them. 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.

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Technorati Tags: cancer, chemoterapy, Health, therapy, treatment

Most cancer patients that have started undergoing chemotherapy would most likely be able to speak about their chemotherapy protocol and would know what that is. For those of you unfamiliar with the concept, it is a list of procedures and characteristics that describe the aim, the means, the potential risks and complications and the expected positive results of the medication that is included in the chemotherapy treatment offered by the doctor. This protocol is to be used as a sort of guide or reference throughout the prescribed treatment.

When going into details, the chemotherapy protocol should present the prescription circumstances, from the pathology of the disease to the location of the tumor and its stage of evolution. It should also include indications and contraindications, it should refer to all the situations that allow or forbid its applications and it ought to refer to scientific sources that may be consulted during the treatment. Another important part of the chemotherapy protocol is to include information and clear description of the drugs that the patient will take.

Drug information means dosage first and foremost, since the medicine concentration is influenced by the tumor size and the patient’s body weight and medical history. Other details in the chemotherapy protocol include info on cyclical administration and the time interval between doses. Moreover, the chemotherapy protocol should indicate how the drug is to be administered, that is, the route of administration, as doctors call it (abdominal, intravenous, oral, etc). Under certain circumstances adjuvant treatment may be necessary and that should also be mentioned in the protocol together with all the precautions and measures that ought to be taken during and after the treatment.

Last but not least, the chemotherapy protocol should talk about the cycles of the treatment. That means it should specify the intervals that separate the various cures and whether the dose intensity varies or not, and if so, under what circumstances. It should also stipulate the recommended number of cycles, the toxicity that the drugs may lead to, the level of recovery reached before beginning a new cycle, the conditions that may require partial or complete cessation of treatment, the modifications and the ways for the patient to adapt to dose increase or decrease.

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Technorati Tags: cancer, Chemotherapy, Health, therapy, treatment

Smoking, they assert, is that the leading explanation for lung cancer world-wide.  A recent study shows that, in the United States alone, 157,200 folks have died of smoking-connected lung cancer.  Some of which are caused directly by smoking, and a few due to used smoke.  But the result of smoking will not solely stop at lung cancer.

Smoking and cancer

Statistics show that smoking attributes to 54% of mouth cancers, 50% of esophageal cancers, and 70% of cancer of the larynx.  And additionally, in relation to men and ladies’s sexual health, smoking increases risks of cervical cancer by 19 to 80% relying on the frequency of consumption, and it conjointly increases risks of penile cancer by 50%.

These numbers definitely prove that smokers are at a bigger probability to develop a lot of different types of cancers as compared to non-smokers.  Male smokers have a 20% increased probabilities of developing lung cancer while women have a 13% increased risk.

Tobacco smoke is composed of four thousand totally different harmful substances, chemicals, and toxins.  Sixty out of these four thousand chemicals are known to cause cancer.  These cancer causing toxins are mainly found in tar that smokers inhale from a cigarette.  Regarding 70% of that tar stays within the lungs. Studies have shown that benzpyrene, one among the carcinogens found in tar, damages and slowly destroys genes accountable for fighting cancer causing cells and subsequently forestall development of cancerous tumors.  In nearly 60% of smoking-induced cancers, these genes were seen to be damaged.

Oral or throat cancer

Oropharyngeal cancer may involve the lips, mouth, tongue, gums, salivary glands, esophagus, larynx, thyroid glands, and/or the cells lining the throat.  Its earliest symptom may be a pale lump within the mouth that will not appear to heal.  An estimated 7,000 Americans die of oropharyngeal cancer yearly.  Smoking could cause cancer development within the mouth alone, on the throat alone, or a mix of both.  Symptoms of oropharyngeal cancer may include the following:

o A sore in your mouth that does not heal or will increase in size.
o Persistent pain in your mouth.
o Lumps or white, red or dark patches inside your mouth.
o Thickening of your cheek.
o Difficulty chewing or swallowing or moving your tongue.
o Issue moving your jaw, or swelling or pain in your jaw.
o Soreness in your throat or feeling that one thing is caught in your throat.
o Pain around your teeth, or loosening of your teeth.
o Numbness of your tongue or elsewhere in your mouth.
o Dangerous breath.
o A swelling or lump in the throat.
o A persistent cough.
o Blood-flecked phlegm.
o The sensation of one thing permanently stuck within the throat.
o Voice changes, like persistent hoarseness or huskiness.
o Throat pain.
o Referred pain into the ears.
o Swallowing difficulties.
o Respiration difficulties.
o Swollen lymph glands.
o Gastrointestinal disorders, like excessive reflux, diarrhea or constipation.

Treatment

Treatment of oropharyngeal cancer will rely on the scale, sort, and location of the cancer and whether or not it has already spread.  It might include one or a mixture of the following:

o Surgery.  This includes surgical removal of the tumor and its affected organs.  The number of tissue to be removed may depend on the size of the tumor and the mass it has already affected.
o Radiation therapy.  This includes exposing the cancer causing cells to tiny, precise doses of radiation.
o Chemotherapy.  It involves the employment of cancer cell-killing medications that is utilized in conjunction to radiation therapy.
o Long run monitoring.  This may embrace regular examinations and x-rays to check {that the} cancer has not come back.
o Rehabilitation therapy.  This includes help from health professionals like dietitians, speech therapists, and physiotherapists to regain motor functions of the affected areas.

The simplest method to avoid getting yourself into this situation is to avoid smoking.  It is understandable that this will be difficult to try to to if you’re a chain smoker.  Clipping on cigarette consumption may help to gradually get you into the trail to being smoke free.  All it takes in enough will power and discipline to keep yourself healthy and cancer-free.

Technorati Tags: cancer, smoking, therapy, treatment