The Essential Guide To Stage 4 Cancer Treatment
There are various treatments for stage 4 cancer available today, however, due to the low life expectancy of sufferers, the treatment is not intended to cure the cancer, rather slow down the effects of the disease, reduce the impact of symptoms and make a person’s life more comfortable. This article goes through the most common stage 4 cancer treatments.
Chemotherapy
In case you’re not aware, chemotherapy refers to the administration of drugs (medicine) used to slow down the growth of cancer in the body. These are administrated over a 1 to 3 day period every couple of weeks. Following the end of this period, doctors see how normal tissue has been affected before administering more chemotherapy. Chemo is known as an effective treatment, however, there are various side effects such as nausea, vomiting and loss of hair.
Radiation Therapy
Radiation therapy involves bombarding high energy x-rays to those parts of the body that are affected by cancer. Such therapy is usually undertaken in coordination with chemotherapy so that as many cancer cells as possible are killed off.
Surgery
A more immediate and sometimes more effective form of treatment for stage 4 cancer is surgery whereby doctors physically remove as much cancer as possible to make life that bit more comfortable for the patient. However, this has limits as to how much cancer can be successfully removed. Given that the cancer has metastasized at this advanced stage, it’s impossible to remove everything. The rest can only be removed via chemo or radiation therapy and this is not even guaranteed.
Hopefully, this article has given you an informative insight into the treatments available for stage 4 cancer.