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 is an additional treatment administered to the patient following a surgical intervention as a means to prevent the possible development of the cancer cells that may have remained after the removal. 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. Radiotherapy or regular chemical-based treatments are included in the adjuvant category and they are recommended by the doctors based on some statistical evidence which is employed in order to figure out whether there is low or high risk in relapse for the patient. Statistics show that about a third of the patients who have received adjuvant treatment have resumed good health only through surgical intervention. For the less fortunate ones, the long term objective of the adjuvant is to lengthen the life

of the cancer patients. The types of cancer in which adjuvant is used are quite various and here we may include colon cancer, lung, pancreatic, breast and prostate cancer as well as some forms of gynecological cancers. 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 patient suffering from breast cancer who will have to undergo surgery for breast removal. The purpose 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 used in the aftermath of the operation rather than prior to it. As for the drug efficiency, the level is a lot higher when the treatment is administered intravenously; another way of enhancing drug efficiency is to insert it directly into the part of the body that is affected by cancer.
This article is written by Mike