How to Treat Cancer Patients

Cancer is a devastating disease that can affect anyone at any time. Cancer is the abnormal growth of cells, and those cells can attack just about any part of the body. Patients can have breast cancer, lung cancer, skin cancer, pancreatic cancer, bone cancer and colon cancer, just to name a few. Treatment options for each type of cancer is different; however, there are common treatment options you should familiarize yourself with as you learn how to treat cancer patients.

Instructions

• 1

  Consider chemotherapy. Chemotherapy, called chemo for short, is a drug regimen the patient takes before or after surgery. Chemotherapy drugs travel throughout the patient's body, killing cancer cells along the way. Combining more than one chemotherapy drug during treatment is common because the different drugs work together to kill more cancer cells.

• 2

  Look into radiation therapy, which delivers high doses of radiation specifically to the cancer cells. The radiation damages or kills the cells so they stop growing.

• 3

  See if surgery is a viable option. Surgery is a cancer treatment option to remove the cancerous cells before they spread to other areas of the body. While some surgical cancer treatments still require you to make an incision in the patient, other surgical options are available. You might consider laser surgery, cryosurgery, MOHS surgery and laparoscopic surgery.

• 4

  Use angiogenesis inhibitors therapy, which cuts off the blood supply to growing cancer cells and tumors. As cancer cells and tumors grow, they create new blood cells to remain alive. Drugs used in angiogenesis inhibitors therapy prevent the tumors and cancer cells from making the new blood vessels they need to survive, so the tumor dies.

• 5

  Weigh the advantages and disadvantages of photodynamic therapy, which uses certain drugs that interact with a specialized light to kill the cancer cells. The disadvantage of photodynamic therapy is that it only works to fight cancer in areas where light can reach.

• 6

  Attack the cancer with targeted therapy. Relatively new on the cancer treatment scene, targeted therapy allows doctors to choose cancer drugs to fight the cancer. However, these drugs don't have the same negative impact on the healthy cells as some other cancer treatment medications do.

• 7

  Let the patient's own defense system treat the cancer with immunotherapy. Immunotherapy works by boosting the patient's immune system and/or giving the patient manufactured versions of normal parts of his immune system. The American Cancer Society projects that immunotherapy will spur many future advances in the fight against cancer.

• 8

  Apply heat to the tumor when you treat with hyperthermia. Hyperthermia requires you to apply heat to the cancerous cells to kill them. There are two options for hyperthermia. Doctors can use a localized area of high heat to kill off a small group of cancer cells. Or, doctors can use hyperthermia to raise the temperature slightly in the area surrounding the cancerous cells, which allows treatments like radiation, chemotherapy and immunotherapy to work better.

• 9

  Study bone marrow and peripheral blood stem cell transplantation. Stem cell transplants can help the patient's body restore after the devastating side effects of the cancer itself, plus treatment options like radiation and chemotherapy.

• 10

  Think outside the box with complementary and alternative medicine. Complementary and alternative medicine doesn't take the place of traditional medical care, but it can offer benefits to the patient during cancer treatment. Treating the patients mind, body and spirit during the cancer treatment process might work best for some patients.