How do you know that the chemo is working?How do you know that the chemo is working?

How do you know the chemo is working?

Doctors cannot currently check the effect of chemotherapy on a solid tumor using regular blood tests. You have to wait until the tumor either shrinks or continues to grow. This can take weeks or months.

How long does it take to recover from chemotherapy?

The vast majority of chemotherapy drugs, the so-called cytostatics, are broken down by the body on its own within a few hours or days. They are excreted via the kidneys and partly also via the intestines. Metabolism only takes a little longer with very few remedies.

What are the side effects of chemotherapy?

The most common side effects of chemotherapy include:

• Disorders in the digestive tract, nausea, vomiting, diarrhea.
• hair loss
• Damage to the bone marrow with impaired production of healthy red and white blood cells and platelets.

What does chemo do to the body?

Chemotherapy is cancer treatment with certain drugs: These drugs inhibit the growth, division and thus also the multiplication of cancer cells. The technical term for these drugs is cytostatics, roughly translated as “cell inhibitor”.

How do you feel after your first chemo?

Tiredness or fatigue is one of the most common side effects. It is related to several factors: illness, anxiety, worries, treatments… Fatigue affects daily activities, humor and mood.

How successful is chemotherapy?

They wrote that he cited a 2004 study from Australia based on data from 1998. The scientists come to the conclusion that the contribution of chemotherapy to a 5-year survival rate in adults is estimated at 2.3 percent in Australia and 2.1 percent in the USA.

How long are you considered a cancer patient?

This period is usually five years. Whether late effects or secondary diseases occur depends on the cancer and its treatment, but also on the individual course of the disease and the side effects.

How many cycles of chemotherapy?

Chemotherapy is usually carried out in several (usually six to sixteen) cycles. Within a cycle, the drugs are administered on one or more days in a row. This is followed by a break in treatment, which can vary in length (days or weeks).

When do the side effects of chemotherapy start?

Nausea and vomiting often start in the evening or the day after the infusion and rarely last more than 72 hours after treatment. If vomiting occurs, it is recommended to rinse your mouth and wait 1 to 2 hours before eating.

Can you die from chemotherapy?

They should heal the cancer patient or at least ensure that the patient does not die of cancer. However, an American study found out why it is precisely the chemotherapy that often causes the patient to die – of all things from cancer.

What are the efforts in chemotherapy?

Efforts in chemotherapy are aimed at offering patients several types of therapy. These are, for example, adjuvant or preventive, curative or healing-oriented, consolidating, additive or supplementary and palliative therapy.

What are the side effects of chemotherapy?

Since the side effects of chemotherapy are well known, patients are given prophylactic or preventative drugs against vomiting and nausea before the infusion. In addition, numerous cancer patients suffer from long-term effects on organs such as the liver, lungs and kidneys.

How does chemotherapy work against cancer?

For this reason, chemotherapy is often given at the same time as a drug that counteracts the nausea. Immunotherapy or antibody therapy uses artificially produced antibodies against the cancer. These attach to structures on the surface of the cancer cell called receptors.

Is chemotherapy used against infection?

In medical terminology, chemotherapy is also defined as antiplastic chemotherapy. When chemotherapy is used to treat an infection, the terms antimicrobial (against microscopic pathogens) or anti-infective (“against the infection”) chemotherapy are used.