由 home-healthhaven 
Chemotherapy is a treatment designed to kill cancer cells. However, it’s not a simple or straightforward process. The drugs involved are engineered to target the specific chemical makeup of cancer cells. Unfortunately, they also harm other healthy cells in the body, which often makes patients feel very sick after treatment.
How well chemotherapy works, and how a patient reacts to it, varies from person to person. Factors like the patient’s age, the type of cancer, the specific medication used, the overall health of the patient, and how their body responds to the drugs all play a role.
Understanding Cell Replication
To grasp how chemotherapy works, it’s helpful to know how cells replicate. Healthy cells follow instructions in their DNA or RNA to divide and grow, but sometimes these instructions go haywire, causing cells to divide uncontrollably. Chemotherapy aims to stop this by destroying the cancerous cells’ DNA or RNA.
Treatment in Cycles
Chemotherapy’s side effects are well-known; it can make patients very ill because it kills both cancerous and healthy cells. To manage this, chemotherapy is usually given in cycles, allowing the body some recovery time between treatments. Oncologists—specialist doctors—decide how effective the treatment is and whether patients can handle the drugs used. If the treatment doesn’t work, other options, like combining chemotherapy with radiation, are considered.
Adjusting Treatment Plans
Once a drug is FDA-approved, it’s then used to fight cancer. The schedules or timeframes for administering these drugs can affect their effectiveness. Oncologists may adjust these schedules during treatment if the current plan isn’t working, and this has sometimes led to better results.
Administering Chemotherapy
Chemotherapy can be given in various ways, including oral medications, injections, IVs, or directly into an artery.
Evaluating Treatment Effectiveness
Oncologists use various tests to check if the treatment is working, such as PET scans, MRIs, and CT scans.