Chemotherapy is a treatment that is carried out through the use of chemicals.
Chemotherapy is the treatment of diseases through chemicals . The concept is usually associated with the treatment of cancer using this type of substances.
The function of chemotherapy is to prevent, in neoplastic diseases, the reproduction of cancer cells . To do this, it causes cellular alteration through the synthesis of proteins or nucleic acids, or through cell division itself.
Origin of chemotherapy
The use of chemotherapy originated in the 1940s . And at that time, various substances began to be used, such as mustard gas, to carry out the treatment of cancer, which is known as the "scourge of the 20th and 21st centuries."
A great advance in this area came after World War II when the use of antimetabolites occurred to stop this disease. And all this was achieved thanks to the research carried out by Sidney Farber , an American pathologist who is considered the father of clinical oncological chemotherapy.
Chemotherapy can cause hair loss.
Negative consequences of treatment
Since its action is not specific, chemotherapy also affects non-cancerous cells and normal tissues of the body. This invasive aspect makes chemotherapy a very harsh treatment for the patient due to its harmful effects.
Some of the negative consequences of chemotherapy are hair loss (which can cause psychological problems), nausea, vomiting, anemia, immunosuppression, diarrhea (or the opposite, constipation) and even the possible appearance of tumors. secondary.
However, there are also other side effects that make it clear that undergoing chemotherapy is complicated for patients both psychologically and physically. Specifically, other consequences are hemorrhages, a decrease in coagulation factors or toxicity that affects the kidneys and liver.
Beyond these issues, chemotherapy has a history of more than six decades and has proven effective in the treatment and cure of certain types of cancer, such as testicular cancer and Hodgkins disease , among others.
Types of chemotherapy
We can emphasize that there are two important types of chemotherapy. Thus, on the one hand, there is monochemotherapy , which is used in certain types of cancer and consists of the administration of a single antitumor drug. The diseases that best respond to this type of treatment are lymphomas and leukemias.
In the same way, we cannot ignore the existence of polychemotherapy . As its name indicates, it is based on what would be the use of several cytotoxic drugs that have different but, at the same time, complementary functions.
Types of chemotherapy include adjuvant chemotherapy (usually given after surgery), neoadjuvant or induction chemotherapy (started before surgery or radiotherapy), and concomitant radiochemotherapy or chemoradiotherapy (which combines chemotherapy with radiotherapy).