Cancer patients may have no other choice but to resort to chemotherapy in order to treat their illness. In oncology, adjuvant chemotherapy will have quite a special role for the patient because it is related to other cancer treatments. Adjuvant chemotherapy 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.

Radiotherapy or regular chemical-based treatments are included in the adjuvant chemotherapy 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 indicate that about a third of the patients who have undergone adjuvant chemotherapy treatment have resumed good health only through surgical intervention. For the less fortunate ones, the long term objective of the adjuvant chemotherapy is to increase the life extent of the sufferer.

The types of cancer in which adjuvant chemotherapy 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.

In terms of parallel treatments, adjuvant chemotherapy 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 example, neo-adjuvant chemotherapy could be used in the case of 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 size of the tumor so that there are fewer risks and a higher rate of success in the surgical intervention.

All in all, adjuvant chemotherapy has been identified as more rewarding in results when it is used in the aftermath of the operation rather than prior to it. The drugs specific to this type of treatment are most efficient when they are administered directly into the blood of the patient, that is, intravenously; another way of enhancing drug effects is to use it locally in the exact body part attacked by cancer.

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