Essential Services Offered At A Cancer Treatment Center

Cancer diagnoses are becoming more common in today's world hence the need for proper treatment. The disease can be very debilitating if left untreated or if discovered late. Those diagnosed with the disease should visit a cancer treatment center to consult their oncologists on available options. The center will carry treatment options that will suit your medical needs, including offering the following services.

Chemotherapy

Chemotherapy is the most recognizable form of cancer treatment. The treatment involves using drugs to prevent or hold back the growth of cancer cells. Patients receive chemotherapy through ingesting capsules or pills, applying creams on the skin, or intravenously through injections to specific body parts like the arm or thigh. Unlike some cancer treatments, chemotherapy treats a variety of cancers. However, it is often combined with other therapies to improve patient prognoses.

Surgery

Oncologists often recommend surgery as a cancer treatment method to patients whose cancer consists of one solid mass in a specific region. The most common forms of surgery are open and minimally invasive surgeries. Open surgery involves making large incisions to the body to remove tumors. Conversely, minimally invasive surgery uses a tiny camera, surgical equipment, and several small incisions to access the tumor. Surgeons often remove the entire tumor, but when complete removal can hurt a patient, they remove part of it and use other treatment methods to kill the rest of the tumor. 

Radiation Therapy

Cancer cells replicate at a speedy rate, hence preventing their replication quickly. One cancer treatment that helps achieve that goal is radiation therapy. The treatment kills or damages cancer cells using intense radiation. Once a cancer cell is severely damaged, it can no longer divide; thus, it dies, after which the body expels it. There are two forms of radiation therapy; external beam and internal therapies. External beam radiation therapy utilizes a machine to target radiation at a specific part of the body. In contrast, internal therapy involves putting radioactive material into your body at the tumor's location. Ultimately, the form of radiation therapy used depends on the size, location, and type of cancer.  

Hormone Therapy

Certain forms of cancer like prostate, ovarian, uterine, and breast cancers rely on hormones to grow. In such situations, oncologists use hormone therapy to treat cancer. Hormone therapy is a cancer treatment that stops the body's production of certain hormones or alters how particular hormones work to prevent cancerous tumors from using them to grow. Hormone therapy is often used together with other treatment options. For example, patients may receive hormone therapy to reduce the tumor's size before undergoing surgery to remove the tumor. 

For more information, visit a local cancer treatment center


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