Treating Cancer For The Better Life

Treating Cancer For The Better Life

Cancer is the major public health problem worldwide as the number of new cancer diagnoses and cancer deaths has been continuously increasing every year. This also generates more awareness of the disease and the methods of treatment.

There are many types of cancer treatment, depends on the type of cancer and how advanced it is. Learn all about the available treatments for cancer.

Surgery: A foundation treatment method which has been used until today. It is the standard treatment to remove cancer for the body, especially in the very first phase because the spread of cancer cell is limited in the particular area.

Radiotherapy: It has been an effective treatment for cancer for more than a century by using high doses of radiation to destroy cancer cells or slows their growth by damaging their DNA. Yet, there are some limitations as only a few types of cancers respond to radiation and it causes massive side effects to nearby tissues and organs. Moreover, radiation increases the risk of developing a new cancer cell in the radiated area.

Chemotherapy: The use of anti-cancer drugs (Cytotoxic) to destroy cancer cells, it works by stopping or slowing the growth of cancer cells which grow and divide quickly. Unlike radiation or surgery, which target specific areas, chemotherapy can work throughout the body and also affect some fast-growing healthy cells. This method is suitable for advanced stage cancer that cannot identify the radiation area and cannot be treated by surgery method.

Hormonal Therapy: A cancer treatment that lower the amount of hormones in the body to stop or slow down the growth of cancer, because some hormones encourage the growth of some cancers. Doctors now use this method to treat breast cancer and prostate cancer.

Targeted Therapy: The use of Chemotherapy leads to the development of Targeted Therapy. It is a new method of cancer treatment that use drugs to more precisely identify and attack cancer cells. It doesn’t harm nearby normal tissue and often causes fewer side effects than chemotherapy. Recent studies found that many types of cancer respond to this treatment such as lung cancer, breast cancer, colon cancer, kidney cancer, leukemia and other hematologic cancers.

Immunotherapy is a method that promotes patient’s immune system to fight cancer cells.  A technology called “CAR-T cell” genetically engineers T-cells (killing harmful cells) to be able to detect cancer cells and destroy them naturally.  This method is newly in clinical studies and is not applied widely.  Thus, the standard of treating is approved to treat blood cancer and lymphomas.

Immunotherapy: This treatment helps the immune system fight cancer cell. Another type of immunotherapy called “CAR-T cell” which is adoptive cell therapy. Doctors extract T-cells from the patient’s blood, then modifies them and infuses back into the patient’s body, so they begin multiplying and attacking tumor cells. Currently, immunotherapy is used to treat lymphoma and other hematologic cancers, but this method is newly in clinical studies and is not applied widely.

Bone Marrow/Stem Cell Transplantation: These two cancer treatment types can be isolated from the patient’s body or can be taken from a donor. In present studies, the stem cell transplantation is usually used to work against only a few types of cancer such as leukemia, lymphoma and multiple myeloma.

The progress in cancer research leads to multiples choices of treatments. Some types of cancer require the combination treatment to reach the most effective outcomes which depends on both patient and disease limitations. The effort of treating cancer is to develop more effective treating results and lessen the side effects.

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