General Approaches to Treating Cancer

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🌱 來自: Huppert’s Notes

General Approaches to Treating Cancer🚧 施工中

General Approaches to Treating Cancer

Surgery, radiation, and medications

•   Surgery (surgical oncology): Resecting the tumor +/– local lymph nodes

•   Radiation therapy (radiation oncology): Can be external beam therapy or internal (e.g., brachytherapy)

•   Medications (medical oncology):

-   Chemotherapy: Cytotoxic therapy that targets rapidly dividing cells

-   Hormone Therapy: Medications to suppress endogenous hormones that drive the growth of certain tumor types

-   Targeted Therapy: Medications that target specific genes and proteins that drive the growth of certain tumor types

-   Immunotherapy: Medications that activate the patient’s own immune system to attack their cancer

Local vs. systemic treatment

•   Local: Surgery, radiation. Sometimes sufficient for localized disease.

•   Systemic: Medications (as above: chemotherapy, targeted therapy, immune therapy, hormone therapy). Goal is to treat cancer cells that may have spread throughout the body.

Timing/order of therapies

•   Neoadjuvant: Treatment given before surgery to “shrink” the tumor to make it easier to resect and/or to better evaluate how the tumor responds to therapy before it is resected

•   Adjuvant: Treatment given after surgery to kill any residual cancer cells and reduce recurrence risk

•   Concurrent chemoradiation: When chemotherapy and radiation are given together; chemotherapy is usually radiosensitizing.