Chemotherapy may be given in many ways. It can be administered through a vein, injected into a body cavity, or delivered orally in the form of a pill, depending on which drug is used. Chemotherapy is sometimes used along with other cancer treatments, such as radiation therapy, surgery, or biological therapy (the use of substances to boost the body's immune system while fighting cancer).
Chemotherapy was formed from mustard gases, which was in use as chemical- arms during the 1st World-War. Chemotherapy for the treatment of cancer began in the 1940s with the use of nitrogen mustard.
When cancer treatment includes chemotherapy, patients have many questions. More than half of all people diagnosed with cancer receive chemotherapy. Chemo works by destroying cancer cells; unfortunately, it cannot tell the difference between a cancer cell and some healthy cells. So chemotherapy eliminates not only the fast-growing cancer cells but also other fast-growing cells in your body, including, hair and blood cells.
One of the most destructive things about chemo is how it weakens the immune system. The immune system is the body's only defense against disease. Since chemo has a detrimental effect on the immune may chemo patients contract other diseases not associated with cancer like pneumonia, bowel diseases, allergies and may create many immunodeficiency disorders.
Your course of therapy will depend on the cancer type, the chemotherapy drugs used, the treatment goal and how your body responds. Adjuvant chemotherapy and radiotherapy are often given following surgery for many types of cancer, including colon cancer, lung cancer, pancreatic cancer, breast cancer, prostate cancer, and some gynaecological cancers. Over time, cancer cells become more resistant to chemotherapy treatments.
Patients who are better prepared tend to have fewer side effects and a higher emotional ability to handle the chemotherapy treatments. Patients receiving chemotherapy are more likely to get infections. Under certain circumstances, your doctor may decide your body is too weak to receive chemotherapy. You may have breaks between treatments so that your body has a chance to build new healthy cells.
The side effects of chemotherapy come about because cancer cells aren't the only rapidly dividing cells in your body. Radiation therapy directs high-energy X-rays at a person's body to kill cancer cells and shrink tumors. Radiation therapy also attacks quickly growing cells in your body, but unlike chemotherapy, it affects only the specific area where treatment is concentrated. Biological therapy, also called immunotherapy, consists of treatment with substances that boost the body's own immune system against cancer.
Receiving chemo during childhood also may place some kids at risk for delayed growth and cognitive development, depending on the child's age, the type of drug used, the dosage, and whether chemotherapy was used in addition to radiation therapy. People who receive radiation therapy before having chemotherapy may notice that involved skin may turn red, blister, and peel once chemo begins. When a cancer has been removed by surgery or treated with radiation therapy, chemotherapy may be used to keep the cancer from coming back (adjuvant therapy).
Given after surgery or radiation, the goal of adjuvant therapy is to eliminate any cancer cells that might linger in your body after earlier treatments. The combination of radiation and chemotherapy can further increase your risk of heart damage.
Chemotherapy is usually administered for approximately 6-12 months or until a patient achieves a plateau response or stable disease, especially if the therapy is well tolerated. Chemotherapy can be frightening to think about. It may cause short term (acute), long term (chronic), and permanent side effects, some of which may be severe.
Chemotherapy can have many unpleasant side effects, such as nausea, vomiting, hair loss, mouth sores, Anemia (decreased numbers of red blood cells; may cause fatigue, dizziness, and shortness of breath) Leukopenia (decreased numbers of white blood cells; may lower resistance to infection), Thrombocytopenia (decreased numbers of platelets; may lead to easy bleeding or bruising), gastrointestinal symptoms, and even heart disease.
There are other options to chemotherapy that are successful in treating cancer but perhaps more important, there are steps we can take to prevent cancer and to avoid the horrible effects of chemo and radiation.
Ever since the cut in re-imbursements, doctors have answered with the only weapon they knew: cutting time with patients.
A decade later most doctors? lives are set - set on the road to be overworked and underpaid if not right down poor.
There simply is only so much time you can cut seeing a patient. And the bad part about this is: you will never ever increase your income that way. It is mathematically not possible. At best you can keep up with what you made before, by working like a horse.
But here is what you for sure will do and have already done by actual survey:
You will get stress.
You will only be able to squeeze so many patients in and thus limit your income.
You will make the patients feel like they are not taken care of and not listened to.
You will create the feeling amongst your patients that you have not found everything or at least not the right reason of their symptoms because of no chance of telling you ALL their story. (It would not matter whether that is true and whether you have definitely found everything - it is the patient's perception that counts.)
You will create a feeling of dissatisfaction with patients and believe you me, they will be taking longer to get well because they have less certainty of their treatment. Call it the placebo effect or magic or voodoo - a trust in the doctor, which largely comes from actions which the patient can observe and evaluate and make him feel comfortable, will have a significant impact on his recovery.
You will open the door to misdiagnosis, by not having understood all, or by simply not having done all tests, because you had no time to ask the question behind the question and thus did not order some test which might have found some important facts or which might have found that all is OK and that a big problem is ruled out. You will again have missed putting the patient at ease.
The above paragraph might also indicate that you would have missed out on huge - immensely huge income from these additional tests, visits and treatments. And all that while not doing right per the patient.
You would have opened the door for lawsuits coming your way from one or two patients who sued for millions because he got sick and some lawyer sells him the idea that his previous doctor (you) could/should have prevented that with proper diagnosis.
You are losing invaluable patient referral. Oh yes, even though you might believe that due to insurance participation, patients have no choice than to go where the insurance sends them and that that is the reason why referrals are not what they used to be. Perhaps there is some truth in it but not enough to justify the overall low referral rate in the country compared to 20 years ago. As we said above, patients feel not cared for, not listened to, not checked enough, not understood. Truth or not is not important. What is important is the perception of the patients. None of that latest high tech equipment will make even for a friendly smile. Thus much, much less referrals and the need for expensive and almost unworkable marketing.
Besides the above points, I have observed that most doctors are not on the up and up to what tests should be administered for what symptoms. Doctors have ceased to be good investigators because of the time restraint they put themselves into. Doctors also are not aware of the new age of referring. That is my made-up name but what I am referring to is how thousands of doctors bring highly paid services on an ON DEMAND basis into the practice and be perfectly clear with the Stark Law. This gets them paid for services which they thought they could only refer out with no reimbursement.
I found that doctors are simply too busy - by their own design - to keep up with what is happening in their backyard. And when they finally find out they are too busy to check it out and thus when they finally act on such new services or new ways, it is something everyone does and just like buying Microsoft stocks today, makes hardly any difference at all.
Summary: Ironically, cutting patients? time is the exact limitation to not only less income for the doctor and more stress for him but also less health and more risk of being severely injured at advanced age for the patient.
By the way, the increased time you need to spend with the patients is not in doing the tests or the treatments, no, I am not saying you should work slow during those actions. The increase in time is needed to explain why the patients needs the tests, or actually to find out that he needs those tests or treatments in the first place. It's the time you need to find out where the patient comes from, what are his deep fears and desires and hidden questions, by talking and talking and talking. Not chit-chatting about the weather but precise questioning which discovers sub-standard health conditions.
Both Joni Bell & Helmut Flasch are contributors for EditorialToday. The above articles have been edited for relevancy and timeliness. All write-ups, reviews, tips and guides published by EditorialToday.com and its partners or affiliates are for informational purposes only. They should not be used for any legal or any other type of advice. We do not endorse any author, contributor, writer or article posted by our team.
Joni Bell has sinced written about articles on various topics from Disease & illness, Medicine and Alternative Medicine. Joni Bell has many years of extensive study in the area of natural cancer prevention and treatment. He has numerous success stories of people being diagnosed living cancer free with use of alternative methods.. Joni Bell's top article generates over 165000 views. to your Favourites.
Helmut Flasch has sinced written about articles on various topics from Medicine, Bathroom Home Improvement and Work From Home. Helmut Flasch is a marketing consultant who uses Un-advertising rather than the traditional advertising methods. Find out more information about his marketing strategy at