Chemotherapy for Breast Cancer

Breast cancer, as a rule, is treated in a complex way. And one of the methods is chemotherapeutic treatment. The essence of this method is the admission of patients with cytotoxic drugs, whose action is aimed at slowing the development of the tumor and the destruction of cancer cells. This method of treatment can be either an independent method of therapy, but can be applied before the operation( or after it).In either case, chemotherapy has different goals.

If the chemotherapy procedure for breast cancer is performed before surgery, then the drugs taken should reduce the tumor. This leads to the fact that the operation will not be so traumatic, and the surgeon will be able to fully maintain healthy breast tissue. The use of cytostatic drugs after surgery is necessary to stop metastasis, as well as to prevent recurrence of the disease.

Leading scientific oncology communities have developed chemotherapy protocols for various breast cancer options. All of them are approved as standards.

Preparations used for breast cancer

Tumor formations in the chest are sensitive to several drugs, including: cyclophosphamide, herceptin, adrblastine, avastine, xeloda, methotrexate, docetaxel, 5-fluorouracil, paclitaxel and some others.

According to the protocols the most popular therapies are:

• CAF;
• CMF;
• FAC.

The first scheme includes cyclophosphamide, Adriablastin, and also fluorouracil. In the second scheme is present: fluorouracil, cyclophosphamide, methotrexate. The third scheme contains Cyclophosphane, Fluorouracil, Adriablastin. In addition, there are schemes with taxanes( Paclitaxel, Docetaxel).

Efficacy of

There are types of cancer that can be cured with chemotherapy. However, most of the cancer is not amenable to drug treatment, and it is conducted in these situations to contain the disease, control the course of the cancer, and also to alleviate the symptoms. The main difficulty, why chemotherapy can not be used to treat most of the cancer, is that the patients( cancer) cells eventually become resistant to the drugs taken. Some cells generally have stability from the very beginning.

For example, if 97% of the cells are sensitive to the drug in the disease, then medication can cope with 97% of the formation, but 3% of the cells will be untouched and they will continue to grow. Resistance to chemotherapy drugs and only partial destruction of diseased cells is the main obstacle to improving the effectiveness of therapy. On this occasion, scientists conduct a lot of research and experiments. Stability is acquired because of the development of biochemical processes that allow to overcome the damage caused by the drug to these cells.

One way to solve this problem is to take several different drugs that have a detrimental effect on cancer cells. After all, the development of several defense mechanisms at the same time is more difficult, which means that the probability of destruction of the entire tumor increases, and not in part. This technique has significantly increased the effectiveness of chemotherapy.

Another method is a high dosage of chemotherapy drugs. However, in this case, another problem arises: a high dosage does a great harm to healthy cells, in particular this affects the cells of the bone marrow, which are responsible for hematopoiesis. This method of solving the problem is used in the event that there is a possibility of bone marrow transplantation( or stem cell transplantation).The larger the tumor size, the greater the likelihood of resistance to the drugs. If the tumor is removed through surgery, then it is likely that a small part of the cancer cells has spread to other parts of the body. In order to prevent the recurrence of the disease( in fact, then it will be much more difficult to carry out treatment), they are prescribed chemotherapy to kill the remaining cancer cells. This method is called adjuvant chemotherapy.