By Mike
Chemotherapy is often the only choice cancer sufferers have to regain a next-to-normal health condition. In oncology, adjuvant will have quite a special role for the patient because it is related to other cancer treatments. Adjuvant represents 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. 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 those who are not included in the above mentioned third, the long term objective of the adjuvant is to lengthen the life of the cancer patients.

Adjuvant works for lots of cancer typologies from colon cancer to prostrate cancer, lung, breast and pancreatic tumors. In terms of parallel treatments, adjuvant is complemented by neo-adjuvant chemotherapy. The latter is given to patients before the primary treatment and it may take the form of chemical drug-based treatment. 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 reduce the tumor size so that there are fewer risks and a higher rate of success in the surgical intervention. 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