Cancer is a debilitating disease that takes millions of lives around the globe every year. If someone is diagnosed with cancer, they’ll usually undergo various types of treatment to treat them. There are many treatments available, which is why it’s crucial for patients who suffer from cancer to know which treatments are best suited to their specific type of cancer.
This blog post discusses the different kinds of treatments that are available and how they can help patients suffering from this condition.
Let us get started!
- Radiation Therapy
There are numerous types of cancer treatment available. However, radiation therapy is one that is highly efficient. It does this by using large doses of radiation to destroy cancerous cells and reduce tumors. For quite a while it has been the preferred treatment for patients who have breast cancer or prostate cancer in particular , with huge success!
There are two main kinds of cancer rations treatments 1.) Radiation therapy that is external Radiation and 2.) internal Radiation.
External Radiation Beam
External beam therapy one type of treatment for cancer that makes use of powerful beams of radiation to deliver large amounts of energy at the tumor. The device may be huge and noisy, however, it will not touch you because the technician is able to be able to move around your body while administering treatments from a variety of angles. This means that they can treat more areas in one treatment than would typically be done with the use of radiotherapy in a localized manner.
The personnel who perform this type of radiation have been specially trained to operate these devices that means less strain on their patients when they receive blast irradiation outside versus conventional techniques like brachytherapy and stereotactic body radiotherapy (SBR).
Internal Radiation Treatment
Internal radiation therapy involves placing an energy source within your body. The most popular form, called brachytherapy, has recently been brought to the forefront of its use with tumors that are difficult to reach or
remove with surgery on their own.
In-situ radiation therapy may be administered through a variety of ways such as putting seeds, capsules or ribbons in and around the cancerous tissues (called interstitial implant) OR by implanting radioactive material as close as it is to the skin around the area where an organ was surgically removed – referred to as percutaneous ipsilateral brachial plate application.Chemotherapy
- For those who aren’t aware, Chemotherapy uses powerful targeted chemotherapy drugs to kill cancer cells.
- Chemotherapy is one type of treatment that is effective in cutting down or slowing growth cancerous cells, which multiply and divide very quickly. Chemotherapy can be utilized to:
- Treat cancer with the concept of curative intent which means that treatment can cure it therefore there is no possibility of recurrence, in contrast to palliative treatment.
- Reduce the symptoms of tumors, such as nausea, pain due to chemotherapy drugs such as Cisplatin (a platinum-based medication) headaches due to blood pressure drops that are associated with shrinkage of tumors.
But, chemotherapy not only eliminates rapidly dividing cancer cells but also triggers dying healthy cells which grow and divide rapidly. Examples include those within your mouth or in your intestines. They can produce side effects, such as sores in the interior of your mouth due to chemotherapy or nausea if it’s administered via intravenously.
Surgery is the removal of a tumor from the patient’s body. Surgery is the best treatment for cancers concentrated in one region. It’s a local procedure which means it only treats a the body part that is affected by cancer, but is not an appropriate treatment for other types of leukemia that have spread to different organs throughout the human body.
Treatment for cancer with surgery generally has the following objectives;
- Removal of the tumor in its entirety. A partial or debulking elimination from the cancer in cases where it is believed that the whole tumor could cause harm to an organ or even the body. A tumor that is removed partially could also accelerate other treatments for cancer and decrease the burden on organs nearby.
- To reduce discomfort and other symptoms of cancer through surgically removing areas of the tumor which exert pressure to the soft tissues.This uses the immunotherapy in Cancer Treatment by the best oncologist in mumbai.
4. Immunotherapy , also known as Immuno-Oncology is the most common method utilized to fight cancer by using the body’s immune system. It is a biologic therapy that utilizes the immune system’s capabilities to fight infections and diseases against cancer.
Our immune system is programmed to identify and kill the growth of abnormal cells (and most likely, it stops the growth of numerous cancers in an individual’s lifetime). This is the reason Tumor-Infiltrating-Lymphocytes or TILs are found near many cancer tumors. TILs in the vicinity of cancerous tumors can be a sign that the body’s immune system is reacting to the tumor.
But, sometimes, cancer is able to avoid being detected and destroyed through the immune system or making itself invisible by the immune system (genetic hiding) and releasing substances on the surface to inhibit the immune system, or using healthy cells to act as shields. That’s where the particularity of Immunotherapy plays a role. In order to allow an immune system fight cancer, these types of immunotherapies are available;
1. Immune Checkpoint Inhibitors
2. Monoclonal Antibodies
3. T-Cell Transfer Therapy
4. Immune System Modulators
Numerous research advances have been achieved in Immunotherapy and this treatment for cancer is slowly gaining trust, similar to Chemotherapy, Radiation Therapy, etc.
