What Is Systemic Chemotherapy?

Chemotherapy is an abbreviation for chemotherapy, which uses chemotherapy drugs to kill cancer cells to achieve therapeutic purposes. Chemotherapy is currently one of the most effective means of treating cancer. Together with surgery and radiation therapy, it is called the three major treatment methods of cancer. Surgery and radiotherapy are local treatments, which are only effective for tumors in the treatment site, for potential metastatic lesions (the cancer cells have actually metastasized, but cannot be detected and detected in the clinic because of the current technical limitations) and clinical metastases Cancer is difficult to play effective treatment. Chemotherapy is a method of systemic treatment. Regardless of the route of administration (oral, intravenous and body cavity), chemotherapy drugs will spread throughout most of the organs and tissues of the body along with blood circulation. Therefore, chemotherapy is the main treatment for some tumors that have a tendency to spread throughout the body and those that have metastasized to advanced tumors.

Basic Information

nickname

Chemotherapy

English name

chemotherapy

Visiting department

Oncology

Multiple groups

Cancer patients

Classification of chemotherapy

Radical chemotherapy

Some cancers that are sensitive to chemotherapeutic drugs, such as leukemia and lymphoma, chorionic epithelial cancer, and germ cell malignancies, can be cured by chemotherapy alone. This type of chemotherapy for curing cancer is called radical chemotherapy.

2. Palliative chemotherapy

In the case that most advanced cancer cells have metastasized widely, it is impossible to cure at the current scientific and technological level. The purpose of chemotherapy is mainly to control the development of cancer to prolong the life of patients, or to improve the quality of life of patients through chemotherapy. This type of chemotherapy is called For palliative chemotherapy.

3. Postoperative adjuvant chemotherapy

Although the mass has been surgically removed, there may be potential clinically undetectable metastases before surgery, or a small amount of cancer cells may fall off around the surgical wound. These residual cancer cells are killed by chemotherapy to prevent cancer recurrence and metastasis. the goal of.

4. Preoperative chemotherapy (neo-adjuvant chemotherapy)

Preoperative chemotherapy can reduce the size of the lesion, facilitate surgical resection, or obtain the opportunity of surgery after shrinking some of the lesions that have lost the opportunity of surgery. At the same time, it can also kill potential metastatic lesions and reduce the possibility of recurrence and metastasis.

5. Endovascular chemotherapy

Through intra-body cavity administration (such as intra-abdominal and intra-thoracic cavity administration), the local drug body temporarily maintains a relatively high drug concentration in the body cavity to achieve the purpose of improving local efficacy.

Chemotherapy indications

What conditions need to choose chemotherapy and what plan to choose? This issue is highly specialized and should be determined by the oncologist based on the specific circumstances of the patient. In general, chemotherapy should be done in the following situations:

1. Malignant tumors that are sensitive to chemotherapy, with chemotherapy as the main treatment method, may be cured by standardized chemotherapy. Such as small cell lung cancer, leukemia, malignant lymphoma, chorionic cancer, germ cell malignancy and so on.

2. Sensitive or relatively sensitive malignant tumors, chemotherapy before or after surgery.

3. Palliative chemotherapy for advanced malignant tumors.

Chemotherapy side effects

Chemotherapy drugs are cytotoxic drugs, which will have some toxic side effects. The most common are:

Digestive system reaction

Such as nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, and stool secretion. Among them, nausea and vomiting is one of the most common reactions to chemotherapy. In recent years, some powerful antiemetics have been marketed, which has greatly reduced nausea and vomiting after chemotherapy.

2. Myelosuppression

Such as white blood cells and thrombocytopenia. Generally, it will recover by itself after 1 to 2 weeks after stopping chemotherapy. Some more severe bone marrow suppression also has drugs that can effectively promote leukemia and platelets, so don't worry.

3. Hair loss

Some chemotherapeutic drugs may cause hair loss, but hair loss is reversible, and new hair will develop again after stopping chemotherapy.

4. Other

Such as liver and kidney damage.
Most of the adverse reactions and side effects of chemotherapy are reversible, and the side effects can be controlled or reduced by the use of some auxiliary drugs. However, chemotherapy is a more intense treatment after all. Therefore, clinicians should strictly grasp the indications for chemotherapy, formulate chemotherapy plans rationally and take necessary preventive measures.

Contraindications to chemotherapy

1. Patients whose condition is too poor or too old to accept chemotherapy.

2. People with severe organ dysfunction (such as severe liver and kidney dysfunction, etc.).

3. Early cancers (such as carcinoma in situ and stage cancer) that have been successfully resected generally do not require chemotherapy.

4. Those who develop drug resistance after repeated chemotherapy and still have no effect after changing chemotherapy regimens should choose other treatment methods in this case.

5. A small number of cancers are not sensitive to chemotherapy drugs, and it is difficult for chemotherapy to achieve the desired effect. Other treatment methods (such as biological immunotherapy) may benefit patients.