By Mike
Chemotherapy is often the only choice cancer sufferers have to regain a next-to-normal health condition. In oncology, adjuvant plays an important role particularly in combination with other cancer treatments. Adjuvant represents an additional treatment given to the patient after surgery to help prevent any cancerous cells that may have not been completely removed during surgery from developing or increasing in number. The patient may relapse even if surgery has been performed because unfortunately, medicine is not sufficiently developed to be able to foresee whether cancer cells will reoccur or not. Chemical-based treatments together with radiotherapy are part of the same adjuvant category prescribed by doctors to stop cancer spread. Statistics show that about a third of the patients who have undergone adjuvant treatment have already been completely cured with the help of the surgery alone. For the less fortunate ones, the long term purpose of the adjuvant is to increase the life extent of the sufferer. Adjuvant works

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for lots of cancer typologies from colon cancer to prostrate cancer, lung, breast and pancreatic tumors. Beside the adjuvant chemotherapy, there is also another type of treatment that resembles the former in name; that is, neo-adjuvant chemotherapy. The neo-variant consists in the administration of drugs in the stage preceding the anti-cancer treatment per se. For instance, neo-adjuvant may be prescribed to a breast-cancer patient who will have to undergo surgery for breast removal. The aim of such a type of therapy is to minimize the tumor size so that the surgery may be performed more efficiently and with less risk. All in all, adjuvant is presently considered more rewarding in results when it is prescribed after the tumor removal rather than before it because the remaining cancer cells are fewer in number and, as a result, the drug is more powerful on them. As for the drug efficiency, the level is a lot higher when the treatment is administered intravenously; another way of increasing drug effects is to use it locally in the exact body part attacked by cancer.
This article is written by Mike