Chemotherapy for brest cancer
May 2nd, 2009 | by Clare |
Breast chemotherapy is the cancer treatment used when the disease has attacked the mammary glands. The treatment aims at reducing the tumor size and at killing the cells with a rapid multiplication rate. Various kinds of breast chemotherapy can be identified depending on the drug combination chosen by the doctor. That is why it is highly important that patients and their family ask for clarifications from their doctors in case they haven’t understood how it all works and that they also know what side effects may be expected as a result of the medication.
Breast chemotherapy is administered either orally or intravenously and it is usually given in cycles. The drug passes in the blood and then travels through the entire body to locate and attack the sick cells meant to be destroyed. The targeted elements of breast chemotherapy are the cancer cells in the mammary glands, but there will be collateral damage to. From this point of view doctors consider breast chemotherapy a systemic form of treatment precisely because it may act all throughout the patient’s organism.
Breast chemotherapy is often prescribed after lumpectomy or mastectomy and in these conditions it is referred to as adjuvant therapy. The treatment is possible in this form only when medical tests indicate that the cancer is limited to the breast area only.
Another situation when breast chemotherapy becomes necessary is when cancer has passed from the lymph nodes or breast to other parts of the body. This particular cancer invasion is known as metastatic breast cancer and it usually represents the ultimate and often lethal form of development.
Whichever of the breast chemotherapy treatments you are to receive it is important to know how you can figure out if it has any effect. This does not mean however that it is mandatory for you to experience side effects or otherwise your treatment is inefficient. This would be the wrong approach to it all. Adjuvant breast chemotherapy may have no side effects but it has always proved to be very helpful as it impedes unhealthy cells from spreading or redeveloping in your body.
Consequently, breast chemotherapy is no easy treatment. It is probably the devastating treatment and the mutilation brought by breast cancer in itself that has increased awareness among women, making disease detection a lot easier and in the early stages of development.