Treatment and Medication Options for Cancer
Cancer treatments aim to stop, slow, or get rid of cancer. A cancer care team will often provide a combination of treatments depending on the type of cancer you have, how far it has spread, and what treatments a person can tolerate.
For example, a surgeon may remove the bulk of a tumor, and your cancer care team may then recommend a course of chemotherapy to kill remaining cancer cells around the body (known as systemic treatment) and reduce the risk of recurrence.
Medication Options
Doctors specializing in treating cancers, or oncologists, can prescribe a huge variety of medications. These are designed to destroy cancers, prevent their growth, and deprive them of nutrients or blood. Others target parts of the cancer cell or help your immune system pinpoint the cancer so it can work against it.
An oncologist may combine these treatments. Your cancer care team can also recommend switching medications within the same drug class if you’re finding it tough to handle the side effects of a therapy or if the cancer becomes resistant to the previous chemotherapy.
A person will have several rounds of these treatments over a few months to give their body the best chance of removing cancer or preventing it from coming back after treatment.
Medication options for cancer include the following:
- Chemotherapy This uses infusions, injections, creams, or oral medications to destroy cancer cells, but it can also damage noncancerous cells. This can lead to side effects, including anemia, hair loss, nausea, and vomiting.
- Immunotherapy This treatment uses medications that help your immune system spot and kill cancer cells. Cancer cells can hide from your immune system, but immunotherapy helps your body recognize and destroy cancer cells.
- Targeted Therapy Some cancer cells have certain mutations that make proteins that encourage cancer cell growth. Targeted therapy drugs block or disable these abnormal proteins. If your cancer cells have one of these specific mutations, a doctor may recommend this type of treatment.
- Hormone Therapy This treatment slows or stops the growth of cancer cells that use hormones to grow. Doctors recommend it primarily for hormone-sensitive cancers, most commonly breast and prostate cancers. Hormone therapy can help reduce the risk of some cancers returning after surgery.
Surgery
Cancer surgeons can use procedures to remove a tumor or cancerous tissue. Some surgeries can also remove part of the tumor if cutting it out completely would damage an organ, or they can remove tumors as part of symptom relief if they’re pressing against an organ or causing pain.
A surgeon might use open surgery, removing the tumor through a large cut, or minimally invasive surgery, operating through several small cuts using a laparoscope (a long tube with an attached camera or a robotic arm).
Ablation Therapy
An oncologist may recommend killing cancer cells by using extreme temperatures, known as ablation therapy.
Most often, a cancer care team performs ablation therapy to shrink tumors, which can extend survival and relieve symptoms. Ablation therapy options include the following:
- Cryosurgery or Cryotherapy This involves using liquid nitrogen or argon gas to apply extreme cold to abnormal tissue, which destroys it. It plays a role in the treatment of skin cancer, some cancers of the eye, and cervical cancer.
- Hyperthermia Although it’s not yet widely available, hyperthermia exposes small areas of tissue to extremely high temperatures that kill cancer cells or increase how much they respond to other treatments. Radiofrequency ablation is a type of hyperthermia that uses high-energy radio waves to create heat.
- Laser Surgery These are highly precise and use powerful, hot light beams to cut tissue. They can destroy tumors, shrink them, or remove benign tumors or precancers that may later become cancerous, often on the skin’s surface or the inside linings of organs. Cancer surgeons often use them to treat basal cell carcinoma, abnormal cells in the cervix, and cancers of the cervix, esophagus, vagina, and lungs.
Side effects of ablation therapy vary based on the location of the cancer, but they can include pain and discomfort, bleeding, discomfort, or damage to nearby healthy skin.
Radiation Therapy
Radiation therapy involves a dose of radiation, which causes cancerous cells to break down.
A radiation oncologist might request radiation therapy as the only treatment or along with other procedures. People may get radiation therapy after surgery to kill remaining cancer cells.
Two main types of radiation therapy are available:
- External Beam Radiation Therapy The most common type, a radiation oncologist targets a tumor with a machine that produces a beam of high-energy radiation. Most often, the energy is X-rays, but they may also use electrons or protons.
- Internal Radiation Therapy This places the radioactive source inside the body, often to treat head, neck, cervix, breast, uterus, or prostate cancers. For brachytherapy, a radiation oncologist may place solid radioactive material, or a “seed,” next to the tumor. Systemic therapy uses a pill or intravenous injection of a radioactive protein that recognizes, attaches to, and releases radiation into specific cancer cells.
Side effects are usually mild and often only affect the body part receiving radiation. They may include fatigue, diarrhea, and irritated skin.
Bone Marrow Transplants
Also known as a hematopoietic stem cell transplant, this uses an infusion of cells obtained from bone marrow or peripheral blood to replace cancerous or potentially cancerous immature blood cells with healthy cells.
An oncologist may use a bone marrow transplant to treat blood cancers that haven’t gotten better after getting other treatments or that have come back after being in remission.
Sometimes, high-dose chemotherapy can destroy healthy blood cells, so a bone marrow transplant might be a part of the treatment plan to build them back up.
Two types of bone marrow transplants are available:
- Allogeneic This uses healthy stem cells from a donor with blood similar to yours –– often a close relative.
- Autologous This uses healthy stem cells from your own body.
Side effects can include a weakened immune system, making you more susceptible to infection.
Additionally, after an allogeneic transplant, you’re at risk for graft-verus-host disease (GVHD). This is when the transplant’s cells attack your body’s tissues, recognizing it as foreign. It can cause a variety of symptoms, and can occur both shortly after the transplant (acute) or later (chronic). Your doctor might prescribe medication to treat GVHD.
