What is Chemotherapy

Chemotherapy medications, regardless of how they're given, generally travel in your bloodstream and throughout your entire body. The intravenous route is the most common, allowing chemotherapy drugs to spread quickly through your system. Chemotherapy often induces anemia that then exacerbates hypoxia in the tumor. The best way of evaluating blood oxygen-carrying capacity is to measure hematocrit and hemoglobin levels. Chemotherapy flows from a plastic bag, through tubing into the bloodstream. Sometimes a syringe is used to push the chemotherapy through the tubing.

Chemotherapy usually has some effect on the immune system. With a lot of chemotherapy protocols, it's not strange for the oncologist to delay a rhythm if a patients white depend is below a certain level. Chemotherapy can affect the white blood cell production in the bones which can make a person at risk for acquring an infection. This lowered resistance to infection can arise as early as one week after treatment and it can continue up to two weeks after a chemotherapy treatment. 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. When used as induction therapy, usually 3 or 4 cycles are given prior to collection of stem cells.

Chemotherapy treatment can make you feel tired. This fatigue may or may not worsen as you are treated with more cycles of chemotherapy. Chemotherapy is the use of drugs to kill bacteria, viruses, fungi, and cancer cells. Most commonly, the term is used to refer to cancer-killing drugs. Chemotherapy may cause sores in the mouth, gums, and throat or cause gum tissues to become irritated and bleed. The physician could dictate a mouth rinse or additional products to reduce pain, dryness, and irritation.

Chemotherapy agents injected into the muscle tissue disperse more slowly into the body than if they are given by an intravenous method. Catheters are also used in chemotherapy. Chemotherapy given by catheter or port into the spinal fluid is called intrathecal (IT) administration. Catheters and ports also may be placed in the chest cavity, abdomen , bladder, or pelvis (intracavitary or IC catheter), depending on the location of the cancer to be treated. Chemotherapy drugs are carefully controlled in both dosage and frequency so that cancer cells are destroyed while the risk to healthy cells is minimized. Often, it is not the primary therapy for prostate cancer patients, but may be used when prostate cancer has spread outside of the prostate gland or in combination with other therapies.