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Chemotherapy is the use of powerful drugs to stop the growth of cancer cells.
Catherine, Princess of Wales, announced Friday that she will undergo preventive chemotherapy to treat cancer discovered after abdominal surgery.
While it is difficult to determine the exact situation because the 42-year-old princess did not reveal the nature of the cancer, here is an explanation of the preventive chemotherapy.
– What is chemotherapy? –
Chemotherapy is the use of powerful drugs to stop cancer cells from growing, dividing, and making more cells. There are a large number of types of chemotherapy, depending on the cancer, its extent, and the treatment regimen.
Because these treatments cannot distinguish between different cells, they end up killing some well-functioning cells, such as white blood cells, causing some side effects.
– Why preventive? –
Preventive chemotherapy is often used after surgery to “decrease the likelihood” of the cancer coming back, Kimmie Ng, an oncologist at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in the United States, told AFP.
Even after successful surgery, “microscopic cancer cells can remain lurking in the body and cannot be detected by current tests,” said Lawrence Young, professor of molecular oncology at the University of Warwick.
It’s “a bit like mopping a floor with bleach when you’ve spilled something on it,” Andrew Beggs, a cancer surgeon at the University of Birmingham, told the Science Media Centre.
– Side effects? –
How chemotherapy affects people can vary depending on the cancer, the treatment, and the individual.
But common side effects include fatigue, nausea, diarrhea, loss of appetite, and an increased risk of infection.
Some rarer and more serious side effects may include sepsis and damage to vital organs.
– How long? –
Again, treatment schedules can vary widely, but a traditional chemotherapy regimen would be given in four to six blocks, said Bob Phillips, a professor of pediatric oncology at York University.
A cycle can last 21 days and “consists of one or several days of chemotherapy, then time for the body to recover,” Phillips said.
Preventive chemotherapy regimens tend to last between three and six months.
It may take weeks or months for people to recover from treatment.
– More cancer among young people? –
Beggs emphasized that “cancer that appears in youth is by no means rare.”
“I run a clinic for early-onset adult cancer and we’re seeing more and more people in their 40s with cancer,” he said.
Shivan Sivakumar, an oncology expert at the University of Birmingham, said there is “currently an epidemic” of people under 50 getting cancer.
“The cause of this is unknown, but we are seeing more patients suffering from abdominal cancer,” he said.
Ng noted that American Cancer Society research published this year showed that younger adults were the only age group in which cancer increased between 1995 and 2020.
“There is an urgent need to investigate the causes of this increase,” Ng said.
Research published in the journal BMJ last week said cancer cases among people aged 35 to 69 in Britain have also increased over the past quarter of a century.
But cancer deaths fell by a significant margin.
“The younger you are, the more likely you are to tolerate chemotherapy well,” Sivakumar said.
Younger people are also more likely to survive cancer.
A combination of early diagnosis and better treatments has led to “survival rates doubling in the last 50 years,” Young said.
“An incidental finding of cancer during surgery for other conditions is often associated with detecting the tumor at an early stage, when subsequent chemotherapy is much more effective,” he added.
– Try it for yourself? –
Michelle Mitchell, chief executive of Cancer Research UK, said such high-profile cancers can serve as a reminder for people to think about their own health.
“If people notice something that is not normal for them or that does not go away, they should consult their primary doctor,” he said.
“It probably won’t be cancer. But if it is, catching it early means treatment is more likely to be successful.”
(This story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)