Ovarian cancer is a disease that over 21,000 are diagnosed with a year. While a diagnosis may be extremely scary, it’s important to know what the process of treatment looks like. Because there is no real screening process for ovarian cancer, the disease is usually found in its more advanced stages. Treatment typically begins with surgery, but because cancer cells are usually not all removed from surgery alone, ovarian cancer patients must also go through chemotherapy to eliminate any cells that may still remain in the body.
This article from WebMD describes the chemotherapy process for ovarian cancer and how the treatment works to combat the disease:
The chemotherapy drugs used to treat ovarian cancer are fairly standard. Typically doctors combine a platinum-based drug such as carboplatin (Paraplatin) or cisplatin with a taxane such as paclitaxel (Taxol) or docetaxel (Taxotere).
Two different methods are used to administer the drugs. One method is to give them through a vein (intravenously or IV). Chemotherapy is administered in cycles of treatment days and rest. That means you'll get the drug treatment, and then you'll have a rest period. The number of treatment days varies with the drug given. Women with ovarian cancer typically get six cycles of chemotherapy.
The other option is to deliver the chemotherapy directly into the abdominal cavity using a thin tube or catheter. This process is known as intraperitoneal (IP) chemotherapy. The advantage to IP chemotherapy is that it bathes the cancer cells directly in the cancer-killing drugs.
Doctors will often place the tube for IP chemotherapy during the initial surgery to remove the cancer. The tube is attached to a port, which makes it easy to deliver the drugs into the abdomen each time treatment is given.
Often, women who receive IP chemotherapy get IV chemotherapy too, because studies have shown that the combination significantly improves survival.
Click the link to read the full article and learn more about chemotherapy treatment for ovarian cancer: http://bit.ly/1p2T5zu
0 comments:
Post a Comment