Chemotherapy is often the only choice cancer sufferers have to regain a next-to-normal health condition. In oncology, adjuvant chemotherapy plays an important role particularly in combination with other cancer treatments. Adjuvant chemotherapy is an additional treatment administered to the patient following a surgical intervention as a means to prevent the possible development of the cancer cells that may have remained after the removal. The health condition is often susceptible to relapses in cancer cases, since no specialist can foresee the evolution or involution of cancer cells.
Chemical-based treatments together with radiotherapy are part of the same adjuvant chemotherapy category prescribed by doctors to stop cancer spread. Statistics indicate that about a third of the patients who have undergone adjuvant chemotherapy treatment have resumed good health only through surgical intervention. For the less fortunate ones, the long term aim of the adjuvant chemotherapy is to lengthen the life of the cancer patients.
Adjuvant chemotherapy works for lots of cancer typologies from colon cancer to prostrate cancer, lung, breast and pancreatic tumors.
In terms of parallel treatments, adjuvant chemotherapy is complemented by neo-adjuvant chemotherapy. The latter is given to patients before the primary treatment and it may take the form of chemical drug-based treatment. For instance, neo-adjuvant chemotherapy could be used in the case of a patient suffering from breast cancer who will undergo breast-removal surgery. The aim of such a type of therapy is to reduce the tumor size so that there are fewer risks and a higher rate of success in the surgical intervention.
All in all, adjuvant chemotherapy is presently considered more effective when it is used in the aftermath of the operation rather than prior to it. As for the drug efficiency, the level is a lot higher when the treatment is administered intravenously; another way of increasing drug efficiency is to insert it directly into the part of the body that is affected by cancer.
