Chemotherapy
Chemical therapy (or chemotherapy) is the use of drugs to treat a disease and with mesothelioma that means using drugs to try and stop cancer cells from reproducing and dividing.
Chemotherapy is usually given by injection into a vein but can be injected into skin or muscle or taken orally. The drugs can also be placed directly into a body cavity (
intracavitary chemotherapy) such as the chest (intrapleural chemotherapy).
Chemotherapy can have a range of objectives:
- hinder the growth of the cancer;
- shrink tumors prior to surgery (neoadjuvant therapy);
- destroying cancer cells remaining after surgery (adjuvant therapy);
- easing symptoms such as pain (palliative therapy).
Widely experienced side-effects include fatigue, hair loss and nausea/vomiting. The severity of these side-effects correlate, among many factors, to what drugs are used, the strength pf the dose and how long they are taken. To combat these side-effects additional drugs can be administered but they may also produce their own side-effects!
If a chemotherapy regimen fails research is underway to identify "second line chemotherapy" treatments.
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