Chemotherapy – cancer treatment and side effects

Are you or someone you know living with cancer?  Although you feel like there is nothing you can do to help the situation at times, just getting informed about such things as treatments and medications can be a great help.  Here is a bit of information about chemotherapy drugs.

Each chemotherapy drug out there today has a specific range of dosage.  For over the counter medications, or rather, medications that you don’t need a prescription for, the therapeutic index is quite wide.  In other words, for different degrees of the issue a different amount of the same medication can be taken.  For example, where two doses of one medication may be needed for a big pain, half that dose can be taken for a milder problem.  However, the same cannot be said for many of your prescription medications like chemotherapy drugs.

These types of medications are very strong and have specific uses, and therefore their therapeutic index is very narrow.  With chemotherapy drugs and dose, too little will not treat the cancer, and too much can be life threatening.  Therefore, doctors have to be very precise in prescribing the right dose for the right person.

For example, the dose for children greatly differs from that of an adult, even if you use both ways of calculating dosages.  The reason for this is a child’s body process medications differently than that of an adult as well as their sensitivity to medication.  This is the same reason why dosages must be carefully measured out for people that; are elderly, have poor nutritional statuses, are obese, have low blood cell counts or liver or kidney diseases, or those people that are already on medications.

The next thing you need to look with chemotherapy drugs and dose is how often you have to take them, or rather, the cycle in which they are given.  For some chemotherapy cycles it may mean just one dose and then a few days or weeks without anything.  Because this type of medication is so severe, the time in between doses is used to help your normal cells recover.  On the other hand, some types of drugs will require doses over many days in a row and then a rest cycle. It all depends on the type of medication.

In the end, different types of chemotherapy drugs work with different cycles, and most often the cycle is determined by the type and stage of the cancer, or may even be flexible enough to take everything into account.  What also will affect this however is when more than one drug is being taken.  And with the majority of cases, these dosages, schedules, and drug interaction information have been founded during clinical trials.  And in the end, they have all been found to work best when a full course has been taken on schedule.

On the other hand, there are times when this is just not possible because of the side effects that each drug can have.  Some side effects are strong enough that doctors must adjust the dose or schedule to allow your body to recover, and even introduce other drugs that help combat these side effects.  Just remember that each case is different and it may take a few tries to get just the right one for you.