what is the purpose of chemotherapy?
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What is chemotherapy?\n\nTreatment with drugs to kill cancer cells is called chemotherapy. \n\nHow is chemotherapy given?\n\nMost anticancer drugs are injected into a vein (IV) or a muscle. Some are given by mouth. Chemotherapy is systemic treatment, meaning that the drugs flow through the bloodstream to nearly every part of the body. \n\nOften, patients who need many doses of IV chemotherapy receive the drugs through a catheter (a thin flexible tube). One end of the catheter is placed in a large vein in the chest. The other end is outside the body or attached to a small device just under the skin. Anticancer drugs are given through the catheter. This can make chemotherapy more comfortable for the patient. Patients and their families are shown how to care for the catheter and keep it clean. For some types of cancer, doctors are studying whether it helps to put anticancer drugs directly into the affected area. \n\nWhen and where is chemotherapy given?\n\nChemotherapy is generally given in cycles: a treatment period is followed by a recovery period, then another treatment period, and so on. Usually a patient has chemotherapy as an outpatient at the hospital, at the doctor's office, or at home. However, depending on which drugs are given and the patient's general health, the patient may need to stay in the hospital for a short time. \n\nWhat are side effects of chemotherapy?\n\nThe side effects of chemotherapy depend mainly on the drugs and the doses the patient receives. Generally, anticancer drugs affect cells that divide rapidly. These include blood cells, which fight infection, help the blood to clot, or carry oxygen to all parts of the body. When blood cells are affected by anticancer drugs, patients are more likely to develop infections, may bruise or bleed easily, and may have less energy. To prevent infections, patients taking chemotherapy should wash their hands frequently, avoid sick people and crowds, immediately clean cuts and scrapes, avoid contact with animal waste, and notify their doctor if they develop chills, sweats or fever at 101 degrees or greater. To prevent bleeding, they must avoid aspirin, ibuprofen, or any medication without the consent of their doctor and avoid cuts with razors, knives, etc. The doctor should be notified with any signs of bleeding, such as blood in stools, vaginal spotting, bleeding gums, vomiting or coughing up blood, and bruising. \n\nCells that line the digestive tract also divide rapidly. As a result of chemotherapy, patients can have side effects the affect the mouth, stomach and intestines, such as loss of appetite, nausea and vomiting, or mouth sores. For some patients, medicines can be prescribed to help with side effects, especially with nausea and vomiting. To reduce nausea and vomiting, patients can eat frequent, small meals, have liquids at least one hour before or after eating, eat foods at room temperature, eat slowly, avoid offensive odors, rest after eating, and breath through the mouth if nausea develops. Usually these side effects gradually go away during the recovery period or after treatment stops. Mouth soreness can be minimized with the use of a soft toothbrush, soothing mouth rinse with a teaspoon of baking soda in warm water, and lip balm. High acid foods and juices, such as tomato, orange or grapefruit, should be avoided. \n\nHair loss, another side effect of chemotherapy, is a major concern for many patients. Some chemotherapy drugs only cause the hair to thin out, while others may result in the loss of all body hair. Patients may feel better if they decide how to handle hair loss before starting treatment. \n\nIn some men and women, chemotherapy drugs cause changes that may result in a loss of fertility (the ability to have children). Loss of fertility can be temporary or permanent depending on the drugs used and the patient's age. For men, sperm banking before treatment may be a choice. Women's menstrual periods may stop, and they may have hot
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www.dmso.org/articles/information/muir.htm \nthis article addresses it's use in humans for cancer
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They are free radicals and radiation and chemo are a few ways they are treating cancer.
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it is a drug used to treat Tuberculosis
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A transplant allows you to have much higher doses of chemotherapy than usual, which may help to improve the chances of curing some types of cancer, leukaemia or lymphoma, or prolonging a remission. Remission is where there is no sign of the cancer.\nVery high doses of chemotherapy, sometimes with radiotherapy, are usually given over a few days. The high-dose treatment destroys the bone marrow and stem cells. So, after the high-dose treatment you will be given a drip (infusion) of either:\nyour own stem cells (autologous treatment) \nor stem cells from a donor (allogeneic transplant).\nBoth of these procedures are often called transplants. But, strictly speaking, only situations where stem cells are taken from someone else are actually transplants. So, throughout this section, the term high-dose treatment with stem cell support is used, rather than autologous treatment.\nHigh-dose treatment with stem cell support, and allogeneic transplants are different treatments, with different risks and possible side effects.\n\nThere are four main steps in the process of both high-dose treatment with stem cell support and allogeneic transplants. These are described briefly below and explained further throughout this section.\n\nThe first step is to reduce the leukaemia or cancer to as low a level as possible, using chemotherapy and/or radiotherapy. Ideally you should have no detectable cancer (this is known as being in remission) at the time of your high-dose treatment. This gives the best possible chance for the treament to work. However, it may also be done if there is only a small amount of cancer still present.\n\nThe second step is the collection of the stem cells from you or your donor. This is known as the harvest.\n\nThe third step is the high-dose treatment. The aim is to remove any remaining cancer cells from your body. You may be treated with chemotherapy alone. Sometimes radiotherapy is given as well. This intensive treatment will completely destroy all your normal bone marrow. This step is sometimes called the conditioning regimen and usually lasts only a few days. It can make you feel very ill and sick. You will be given anti-sickness (anti-emetic) drugs, which may also make you feel sleepy. These drugs are very effective, and can usually control feelings of sickness (nausea) and vomiting.\n\nThe fourth step is to give the stem cells to you through a drip. This is a bit like having a blood transfusion. It will be 2–4 weeks before the cells find their way through the bloodstream into the bone marrow and start to make new blood cells for you. You will need to be in hospital until the number of blood cells in your blood stream has gone back to a safe level.\nWhile your level of healthy blood cells is low, you will need to have antibiotics. This is because you will have very little resistance to infection. You may be given injections of growth factors (G-CSF) to help your bone marrow to make new blood cells more quickly. You will also need to have blood and platelet transfusions. You may be looked after in a room on your own to protect you from infection. During this time you will need constant medical and nursing support.
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Not currently, however there are treatments and preventative measures. \n\nA cure means you will be completely absolved of the problem forever.  \n\nA treatment is a management. Like chemo can rid a person of cancer for awhile but there's still a chance it will come back. \n\nCancer happens on a cellular level so it's going to be a tough one to find a 'cure' for.  \n\n(Quoted)\nCancer can be treated by surgery, chemotherapy, radiation therapy, immunotherapy or other methods. The choice of therapy depends upon the location and grade of the tumor and the stage of the disease, as well as the general state of the patient (performance status). A number of experimental cancer treatments are also under development.\n\nComplete removal of the cancer without damage to the rest of the body is the goal of treatment. Sometimes this can be accomplished by surgery, but the propensity of cancers to invade adjacent tissue or to spread to distant sites by microscopic metastasis often limits its effectiveness. The effectiveness of chemotherapy is often limited by toxicity to other tissues in the body. Radiation can also cause damage to normal tissue.\n\nBecause "cancer" refers to a class of diseases, it is unlikely that there will ever be a single "cure for cancer" any more than there will be a single treatment for all infectious diseases
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Chemotherapy =  chemicals used to medicate your body.  It includes aspirin and benadryl.  Most people associate chemotherapy with cancer killing medicines, however - and with pretty bad side effects.  Every chemotherapeutic agent works differently, but most target rapidly growing cells (cancer cells are usually the fastest growing cells within the body).  They can cause damage to other cells as well - leading to the nausea, vomiting and weakness associated with most chemotherapy regimens.
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a cell mutates, divides and spreads, that is it. to cure cancer go to the source listed below.
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radiation tends to reduce it\nbacterial infection increases it\nand with chemo, it depends; 'poison'-type chemo reduces it, but 'immuno-'type chemo actually increases it ( and the white blood cells are coaxed into attacking the cancer cells.
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I bet you mean "zometa".  It's for bone metastasis.  It strengthens your bones and thearetically decreases the spread of cancer in your bones.
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The above is not complete. Don't have time to go into details, but check out this website:\n\nhttp://www.learner.org/channel/courses/biology/textbook/cancer/index.html\n\nI suggest reading the entire chapter if you don't have time for that, I suggest the section on Tumor Biology and the treatment section
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I don't think chemotherapy constitutes cutting one's hair. It falls out. They have no control over it.
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because its not a cure!!!\n\nits a lethal drug!!!
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There are many weapons in our arsenal against cancer. Some can cure certain cancers. Some can slow the cancer's advance down. No one approach cures all cancers.\n\nTypically once a cancer has metastasized and become cancers in the abdomen, the outlook is much worse, I am sorry to say. \n\n\nHere is a range of some of the types of cancer therapies:\n\nYou can cut it out. \n\nYou can try to kill the fast growing cancer cells with radiation or chemotherapy.\n\nYou can use drugs that target the blood supplies of the cancer (angiogenesis).\n\nYou can use molecular biology to design medications that bind to the receptors on the cancer cells and prevent them from functioning. \n\nThere are a range of other drugs that inhibit certain processes in the cancer cell (see ref).\n\nAntibody treatments like monoclonal antibodies. \n\nBiological response modifiers like immunotherapy, cytokine therapy.
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Many of the chemotherpeutics are designed to rob the tumor of Oxygen and blood vessels (VEGF blockers is a common group), but the truth is it is more complicated than that. If you rob a cell of oxygen you trigger the HIF (hypoxia inducible factor) set of genes as a first response. These can help a cell cope in anoxic conditions. There are many cases where a tumor is deprived of oxygen and in some cases you get a necortic core, but in other cases nothing happens. Second problem is that to deprive the whole tumor of O2 you will have to remove it from the body (b/c it is attached at the basement membrane and that has a source of O2) so at that point you've successfully removed a tumor anyway so you don't need to "kill" it any further.
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I'm not sure about treatment, but for info check out the leukemia and lymphoma society. Also, there are several books written on it, so check your local library. I don't remember the names of any of them, but some of them were pretty easy to understand.
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It is a list of all chemical used in a certain area,store, or home.  It tells you what the products use is for, what to do for medical help if it is hazardous, what chemicals make it up, how to store it, and all the necessities if someone was to come in contact with it who didn't have a clue what it was used for.  Say for instance someone accidentally swallowed a chemical, Medical professionals, If it needed immediate action, would know how to treat and what actions to take.  God Bless.  Hope this link can help.