How Do Cancer Treatments Work Together?
One of the most important things oncologists do for their patients is to help determine which type of treatment or treatments are required. Sometimes, the treatment is standalone and sometimes, if a cancer is more advanced or not in a single location, different treatments are used in combination with one another to achieve the maximum benefit for the patient.
The three most common cancer treatments are surgery, chemotherapy, and radiation – treatments that are well known and have been used for decades. A patient may receive any of these individually, or two or three of them in some combination. Those combinations depend on the stage of the disease and its location in the body.
There are other treatments being used more and more that are also worth learning about if attempting to better understand how treatments work together. Those include immunotherapies, targeted therapies, hormone therapies, and stem cell transplants. These treatment options continue to be researched and already are or could become standard treatment in the coming years.
Types of Cancer Treatment:
Surgery – used most commonly for the treatment of solid tumors and cancer contained to a specific part of the body. Surgery is used to remove a tumor, “debulk” a tumor to remove as much of a tumor that can be safely removed, or not as a curative measure, but to remove tumor growth that is causing pain and discomfort because of its size or location.
Chemotherapy – these are medications administered via an IV or taken orally that are used to kill cancer cells throughout the body. It is considered a systemic treatment, as it targets cancer cells throughout the body, not just one specific place. Chemotherapies can be used as a standalone treatment for cancer, but are also used before surgery or radiation therapy to minimize the size of tumors making those other treatments more beneficial, or after surgery or radiation to kill off any remaining cells that the other treatments may have missed.
Radiation therapy – also called radiotherapy, radiation is used less commonly as a standalone treatment for cancer and more commonly in conjunction with other treatments like surgery or chemotherapy. When it is used with other treatments, like chemo, radiation may be recommended before or after, depending on the size and location of the cancer growth. Radiation may also be used during surgery, which prevents the unwanted transmission of damaging radiation through healthy tissue by applying the radioactive beams directly to cancerous tumors.
Immunotherapy – can be used as a standalone treatment, though not nearly as common as the previous three treatments already detailed, or also used in tandem with other treatment modalities. Immunotherapies attempt to harness the body’s immune system into fighting cancer cells by boosting the immune system or training them to work to attack specific cancer cells. This is a fast-growing area of cancer research right now.
Targeted therapy – A new and promising treatment often called precision medicine, which uses genetic markers of cancer cells extracted from biopsies or during surgery to remove cancerous tissue to target specific cancer cells. Most people who receive targeted therapies also receive one or more of the most common cancer treatments. While targeted therapies are technically considered a type of chemotherapy, the major difference between the two is that targeted therapies are created to not harm healthy cells and instead, specifically target cancer cells.
Hormone therapy – The growth of some cancers is dependent on hormones within the body. Because of that, hormone therapies are used to either block or alter hormones that contribute to cancer within the body. This can be achieved through drugs or surgery, by removing an organ that produces the hormones that enable cancer to grow more quickly. Two common types of cancer that are treated with hormone therapies are breast or prostate cancers.
Stem cell transplants – this is an intense form of cancer treatment used after high doses of chemotherapy or radiation have been administered. Stem cells are either returned to the body (if the cancer patient’s own cells are used) or introduced into the body (if a donor’s cells are used) to, in effect, rescue a cancer patient’s immune system after heavy doses of other treatments destroyed it. This is a very specific treatment for systemic cancer, not localized cancer.
Srilata Gundala, MD, the hematologist/oncologist who founded Hope & Healing Care centers in Lombard and Hinsdale, Illinois encourages every cancer patient she treats to work hard to understand their treatments and why they were chosen, “It is so important for patients to feel informed and prepared. Asking questions of their doctors and seeking clarification for why a particular treatment was recommended is crucial for the patient to feel at peace with the treatments they receive. That peace allows patients to commit to their treatment and move forward into health.”
Written By: Sheila Quirke, MSW
Reviewed By: Srilata Gundala, MD
