Cancer is still a horrible disease, with millions of people dying from it worldwide each year. However, cancer is not the death sentence that it used to be, and many cancers are treatable with cancer treatment therapy. The kind of cancer treatment therapy you need depends on the kind of cancer you have, how advanced it is, and a number of other factors. Here are some of the treatments that are available.
Surgery is one of the main treatments for many types of cancer, especially ones that produce solid tumors, including breast cancer, lung cancer and testicular cancer. In some cases when cancer is caught at a very early stage, surgery may bring about a cure by itself. In most cases, however, surgery is combined with other forms of treatment.
Another common form of cancer treatment therapy is chemotherapy, which involves using drugs to kill the cancer. Chemotherapy is used in many forms of cancer, including both those that produce solid tumors and cancers of the blood and bone marrow. Though chemotherapy has improved greatly over the past few decades, it still can be very debilitating. Many chemotherapy regimens still work by targeting fast-growing cells, which kills the cancer but also kills many healthy cells. Among the many side effects of chemotherapy are hair loss, extreme nausea, anemia and an impaired immune system. Advanced cancer treatment options these days can include some more effective and more targeted chemotherapy drugs that have fewer side effects, but such drugs still are rare.
Radiation is the other most common cancer treatment. Again, it is most effective against solid tumors. Radiation works by killing cancerous tissue, but like chemotherapy, it also can damage nearby tissue as an unintended side effect. A newer form of radiation therapy called proton beam radiation is more targeted and more effective. It stops at a very specific point and reduces the rate of damaged tissue nearby. It also allows the amount of radiation used in treatment to be reduced by up to 60%. Proton radiation therapy is most commonly used as a prostate cancer treatment, but it can be used in other cancers as well.
Other cancer treatments include gene therapy, which uses targeted treatments based on a person’s genetic makeup. In addition, some people swear by alternative therapies, but there is little research evidence that shows such treatment works.