CANCER TREATMENT

There is no single treatment for cancer - doctors have a range of options available and must decide which is best for the patient. They will often combine several types of treatment for greater effect, taking into account all sorts of factors. For example, the patient's age, history and lifestyle are very important in deciding on the best treatment. Doctors will involve the patient in the decision as much as possible.

There are currently many different ways to treat cancer.

Conventional Treatments

Surgery

For many centuries, surgery was the only treatment for cancer. The famous 18th century surgeon, John Hunter, suggested that surgery might cure cancer if the tumor had not invaded the surrounding tissue. He remarked that "if the tumor is moveable... there is no impropriety in removing it".
This procedure remained the mainstay of breast cancer treatment until very recently. Nowadays, the use of chemo- and radiotherapy, and the ability to diagnose breast cancer earlier thanks to screening programmes, means that radical mastectomy can often be avoided.
Recently, cancer surgery has benefited from the use of high-tech imaging techniques such as ultrasound, MRI and CT scanning These procedures allow a surgeon to find out the exact size and shape of a patient's tumor. And the widespread use of keyhole surgery allows surgeons to operate on a patient's tumor without leaving large disfiguring scars.

Radiotherapy

Radiation therapy is one of the three traditional primary forms of medical treatment used by the experts at Cancer Treatment Centers of America to treat your cancer, and for relief of symptoms. It may be used alone or in combination with surgery or chemotherapy, almost anywhere within your body. Innovative new techniques have evolved and are still evolving, enabling delivery of higher radiation doses to cancer cells and limited doses to your normal tissue.

Chemotherapy

The underlying principle of chemotherapy is to kill the cancer by treating them with chemicals that interfere with the process of cell division. They do this either by damaging the proteins involved, or by damaging the DNA itself. This causes the damaged cells to commit suicide.
Chemotherapy can have many unpleasant side effects, such as nausea, vomiting, hair loss and mouth sores. New, and usually effective, approaches to prevent or moderate these side effects will be utilized to help you through your chemotherapy treatment. The fractionated dose approach may diminish the side effects, particularly nausea and vomiting.
Different classes of chemotherapy drugs work by interfering with different stages of cell division. To take advantage of this, doctors often prescribe them in combination ('combination therapy'), so that they are more effective.

Hormone therapy

Hormones are chemicals produced by glands in your body, and are circulated in the bloodstream. Estrogen and progesterone are hormones that affect the way some cancers grow. If tests show that your cancer cells have estrogen, progesterone, and/or testosterone receptors (molecules found in some cancer cells to which estrogen and progesterone will attach), hormone therapy is used to block the way these hormones help the cancer grow. This treatment may include the use of drugs that change the way hormones work, or surgery to remove the ovaries that make female hormones, or the testicles, which produce male hormones.

Immunotherapy/biotherapy

Cancer may develop when the immune system breaks down or is not functioning adequately. Biotherapy is designed to repair, stimulate, or enhance your body’s own immune responses. Treatments such as interferon and colony stimulating factors are used now, either alone, or in conjunction with other modalities such as surgery, radiation and chemotherapy.

Gene therapy

As cancer is a disease caused by damaged DNA, many researchers have tried to find ways to correct this damage by correcting the DNA itself. Some gene therapy strategies aim to replace damaged genes with copies that work - like replacing a faulty part of a car that has broken down.

Photodynamic Therapy

Photodynamic Therapy is presently being used for esophageal cancer, and early stage lung cancer (excluding mesothelioma), where it has been shown to be more than 90 percent effective. It is also being utilized as an investigational therapy for obstructive lung cancer, Barrett's esophagus, head and neck cancer, and skin cancer. Skin cancers (basal cell and squamous cell), may also be effectively treated with PDT. PDT is a two-step procedure that is done on an outpatient basis. You will be injected with a light-activated drug (Photofrin), which targets cancerous cells. Approximately 24-48 hours later, a laser light is directed through a scope onto tumor cells, exposing the cancerous tissue to a certain spectrum of light. The light "switches on" the drug, destroying the cancerous cells without damaging your surrounding healthy tissue.

Chemoembolization

Chemoembolization is an innovative method to treat certain types of liver cancer, whether the tumor began in the liver (liver cancer) or spread to it from another organ (metastasized to the liver). It involves injecting chemotherapy directly into the blood vessels that feed the liver tumor.
A small catheter will be inserted through a needle (with X-ray guidance) into your femoral artery, located in your groin. The radiologist will then thread the catheter up through your aorta (the largest artery, located in your heart) and into the artery in your liver, which is the one that feeds the tumor.
Chemotherapy, mixed with a microsphere is injected directly through the catheter into this artery and into the tumor. When blood flow in the artery stops due to the blockage from the microsphere, the catheter is then removed. This procedure provides a high concentration of chemotherapy into the tumor and provides, what is usually, a temporary cut off of the arterial blood supply to the tumor.

Complementary Therapy

Nutrition Therapy
Pain Management
Naturopathic Medicine
Mind-Body Medicine
Oncology Rehabilitation
Spiritual Support
Image Enhancement

sources : info.cancerresearchuk.org, cancercenter.com