Understanding Chemotherapy and its Role in Preventing Breast Cancer Recurrence
Breast cancer is a disease that affects millions of women worldwide. While there are many treatment options available, chemotherapy has been proven to be an effective method for preventing breast cancer recurrence.
What is Chemotherapy?
Chemotherapy is a type of cancer treatment that uses drugs to destroy cancer cells. These drugs can be given intravenously or orally, depending on the patient’s needs. The goal of chemotherapy is to kill as many cancer cells as possible while minimizing damage to healthy cells.
How Does Chemotherapy Work?
Chemotherapy works by targeting rapidly dividing cells, which includes cancerous cells. It interferes with the cell division process, preventing the tumor from growing and spreading throughout the body.
While chemotherapy does target cancerous cells, it also affects healthy cells in the body that divide rapidly such as hair follicles and bone marrow stem cells leading to side effects like hair loss and fatigue.
Role of Chemotherapy in Preventing Breast Cancer Recurrence
After surgery or radiation therapy for breast cancer, some patients may still have microscopic amounts of tumor left behind called micrometastases which could lead to recurrence later on. In these cases where there’s high risk for recurrence, doctors recommend adjuvant chemotherapy (chemo after surgery) with one or more chemo drugs like anthracyclines (doxorubicin), taxanes (paclitaxel), cyclophosphamide etc., depending on various factors including age and overall health condition.
Adjuvant chemotherapy helps eliminate any remaining tumour cells thus reducing chances of relapse significantly but it comes at a cost – higher toxicity levels leading to significant side-effects like nausea/vomiting/fatigue/hair-loss/neuropathy etc., making it difficult for some patients who might not tolerate them well enough.
Recent Advances in Understanding Chemo Resistance
Despite its effectiveness against breast cancer tumors initially, some patients may experience a recurrence of the disease after chemotherapy. This is because certain cancer cells can develop resistance to chemotherapy drugs over time.
Researchers have been studying ways to overcome this chemo-resistance by looking for new drug targets and developing personalized medicine approaches that take into account each patient’s unique genetic makeup.
One such approach involves using immunotherapy which harnesses the power of the body’s immune system to fight cancer cells. Another promising development is targeted therapy, which uses drugs that specifically target proteins or genes involved in tumor growth and spread making them more effective against resistant tumors.
Conclusion
Chemotherapy has proven to be an effective method for preventing breast cancer recurrence but it comes with its own set of side-effects like hair loss, fatigue etc., making it difficult for some patients who might not tolerate them well enough. Recent advances in understanding chemo-resistance are offering hope towards finding better treatments that are less toxic yet more effective against resistant tumors thus improving outcomes significantly.
References:
1. Chemotherapy – National Cancer Institute (https://www.cancer.gov/about-cancer/treatment/types/chemotherapy)
2. Adjuvant Chemotherapy For Breast Cancer: What You Need To Know – American Society Of Clinical Oncology (https://www.cancer.net/cancer-types/breast-cancer/adjuvant-chemotherapy-breast-cancer-what-you-need-know)
3. Chemo Resistance In Breast Cancer: Causes And How To Overcome It – Healthline (https://www.healthline.com/health/breast-cancer/chemo-resistant-breast-cancers)
4. Personalized Medicine Approaches For Breast Cancer Treatment – The University Of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center (https://www.mdanderson.org/publications/oncolog/personalized-medicine-approaches-for-breast-cancertreatment.h00-159144078.html)
*Note: this site does not provide medical opinions or diagnosis and should not be relied upon instead of receiving medical attention from a licensed medical professional.
