Breast chemotherapy refers to the treatment applied to patients who suffer from breast cancer. Its purpose is to kill or to reduce in size the tumor consisting of cells that multiply very quickly compared to the normal rate of multiplication of normal cells. Breast chemotherapy can be of very many kinds depending on the combination of drugs that the doctor has selected for you. Correct information on the way the medication works as well as an analysis of the side effects and the optimistic evaluation factors ought to be part of the discussion between doctor and patient that precedes the treatment as such.
There are two ways of administering breast chemotherapy: orally in cycles established by the doctor or intravenously. The drug passes in the blood and then travels through the entire body to locate and attack the sick cells meant to be destroyed. The targeted elements of breast chemotherapy are the cancer cells in the mammary glands, but there will be collateral damage to. From this perspective doctors call breast chemotherapy a systemic treatment precisely because its effects are extended to the entire body structure.
Breast chemotherapy may be recommended after lumpectomy or mastectomy and in this case it is known as adjuvant treatment. The treatment is possible in this form only when medical tests indicate that the cancer is limited to the breast area only.
Another situation when breast chemotherapy becomes necessary is when cancer has spread from the lymph nodes or breast to other parts of the body. This particular spread bears the name of metastatic breast cancer and it usually represents the ultimate and often lethal form of development.
Is the breast chemotherapy treatment effective or not? Can one tell without a doctor's opinion? This does not mean however that it is mandatory for you to experience side effects or otherwise your treatment is inefficient. This would be the wrong approach to it all. Adjuvant breast chemotherapy could show no side effects but the efficiency rate is often very positive in the sense that the spreading of the malevolent cells is stopped.
All in all, breast chemotherapy is no easy treatment. It is probably the devastating treatment and the mutilation brought by breast cancer in itself that has increased awareness among women, making disease detection a lot easier and in the early stages of development.
