Tuesday, September 12, 2017

CONTEMPORARY CANCER TREATMENTS

Cancer was once considered as an incurable disease, but with time, improved medical procedures and technologies have made most of the cancer types curable.
Today, oncology offers a wide array of cancer treatments.

Surgery

Surgery is the oldest and yet most reliable way for cancer treatment. There are several different surgical procedures used to remove cancer from the body. Let’s take a look at some of these.

Curative surgery

It is also called primary surgery and is usually undertaken when oncologists are sure that the cancerous tumor is only limited to one part of the body. The whole bulk of the cancerous cells are removed through surgery.

Surgical debulking

Surgical debulking is the process which is done when some but not all of the cancerous cells are removed through surgery. Surgical debulking is usually chosen when there are chances that the removal of the entire tumor could result in irrevocable damage to adjacent tissues, organs or veins. The portion of the cancerous tumor that is left is then treated by non-invasive procedures.

Palliative surgery

Palliative surgery is conducted on patients that are going through advanced stages of cancer. The objective of this surgery is to decrease the discomfort and disability caused by large cancer tumors. This procedure does not cure the cancer itself, but alleviates the symptoms to give patients a better quality of life.

Prophylactic surgery

In this type of surgical procedure, those body tissues are removed that are vulnerable to cancer, so prophylactic surgery is basically a risk prevention measure. For instance, women with a strong family history of breast cancer sometimes inherit mutated breast cancer genes which place them at a very high risk of contracting breast cancer. In this case, preemptive removal of the breasts may be recommended by oncologists as a preventive measure.

Radiation therapy

Radiation therapy uses highly energized electromagnetic rays to kill and shrink cancerous cells. Radiations is a couple of different methods to treat cancer.

External beam therapy

In this procedure, the affected area of the body is subjected to radioactive beams from an external source. It is considered as a localized treatment because the whole body is not exposed to radioactive rays, which in themselves can be quite hazardous.

Internal Radiation therapy

In this cancer treatment, a radiation source is put inside the body at the location of the tumor, in either solid or liquid form. Internal radiation is given when the size of the tumor is too small and it is located in the vicinity of vital tissues and organs that are sensitive to the radiation.

Chemotherapy

Chemotherapy is a cancer treatment which uses cytotoxic drugs to kill cancer cells. Chemotherapy is often prescribed before surgical removal of the tumor due to its non-invansive nature. For some cancer patients, where surgery is out of the question, this is the only option.

Hormone therapy

In some specific types of cancers (prostate and breast cancer), cancer cells use the body’s hormones to grow. Hormone therapy suppresses the production of these hormones which consequently helps in retarding the growth of the cancerous tumor.
Apart from these traditional medical cancer treatments; there are great numbers of people who opt for complementary and alternative medicine (CAM). CAM is a broad term used for medical practices and products that are derived from conventional ways of treating cancer. These treatments are usually chosen by people to avoid the side effects of chemotherapy.

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DR. JESSE A. STOFF is an internationally renowned physician with extensive credentials in clinical immunology and holistic medicine. A graduate of New York Medical College, he pursued extensive post-doctoral training including a fellow- ship at the Royal London Homeopathic Hospital in LondonEngland. He has authored/co-authored countless articles and 8 books including co-authoring the bestseller "Chronic Fatigue Syndrome: The Hidden Epidemic" and The Prostate Miracle.

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