What are current mainstream treatments for tumor patients?

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What are current mainstream treatments for tumor patients?

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What are current mainstream treatments for tumor patients? There is no absolute statement that cancer patients must undergo surgery.

Different treatment methods can be selected according to the different nature of tumors. The time of tumor discovery and the degree of malignancy can also affect the choice of treatment methods.

The main methods of treating cancer:

Surgery, radiotherapy, and drug therapy are the three main methods of treating cancer. Among them, surgery and radiotherapy are local treatments, and drug treatments are systemic treatments.

1. Surgery

Surgery is the earliest treatment method applied to cancer. The method of removing tumors with a scalpel freehand has its own advantages, but also has considerable limitations. The advantages of surgery are quick and direct.

However, surgical treatment of cancer is restricted by many conditions. First of all, it must have a certain surgical space; secondly, it is also restricted by the patient’s own physical conditions, such as age, cancer stage, multiple and extensive metastases, and patients with surgical contraindications. .

Surgery, as a local treatment method, is often difficult to achieve the best therapeutic effect, and even has a high risk for tumors in nasopharyngeal carcinoma and pancreatic cancer with insufficient operation space and complex structures, various important organs, tissues, and blood vessels. .

Therefore, the one-size-fits-all approach of “if you are suffering from cancer, stop and talk” often leads to the loss of the best treatment methods and treatment opportunities.

2. Radiotherapy

Radiotherapy is the use of some high-energy particle rays to strike and destroy the tumor leader.

There are three commonly used radiation treatments for tumors: one is gamma rays, and the most commonly used radiotherapy equipment is gamma rays produced by cobalt 60 as a radioactive source. ; The second type is X-rays, which are also very powerful; the third type is proton rays.

In terms of treatment methods, the public’s understanding of radiotherapy is probably still at the most primitive stage of general radiotherapy (ordinary radiotherapy).

For example, people often understand radiotherapy as traditional radiotherapy, but after traditional radiotherapy, the tumor is almost eliminated.

However, many normal tissues are also severely damaged, especially those with more serious skin damage, such as blackening and ulceration, which are just as painful as charcoal grilling.

Now that radiotherapy has entered the era of precision radiotherapy, the mainstream radiotherapy method is called 3D conformal precision radiotherapy.

For example, the well-known TOMO knife is a precise 3D radiotherapy device. When it irradiates the tumor, the computer can irradiate the device from different angles.

Tumor, the dose of each irradiation angle is relatively small, but it can accurately focus on the tumor site, so that the tumor site can receive large doses of radiation while the surrounding normal tissues receive less radiation, so 3D radiotherapy is effective for normal tissues.

The damage is less than traditional radiotherapy.

Precision radiotherapy is not only suitable for the palliative treatment of advanced tumors, more and more early tumor treatments are also using precision radiotherapy, because the relative treatment is less traumatic, especially for some elderly patients who cannot tolerate surgical trauma. , Was hailed as “the scalpel without blood.”

Radiotherapy is a very complex medical technology. It not only relies on equipment, but more importantly, it relies on human experience.

Radiotherapy requires the physician to delineate the target area based on the positioning CT, combined with the image data, and give the target dose and the limited dose of the organ at risk.

The physicist then calculates, optimizes and implements it according to the physician’s requirements to ensure the effectiveness, safety and availability of the radiotherapy plan.

Therefore, in addition to high-tech radiotherapy equipment, experienced physicians and physicists are important prerequisites for a perfect radiotherapy plan.

3. Medication

Drug therapy is also one of the treatment methods for cancer. It is mainly through intravenous injection, oral administration or other forms to allow chemical drugs to enter the body, which can inhibit the growth and spread of tumors.

Drug therapy is a systemic treatment. The drug will flow to the whole body through the blood, and it also has a strong killing effect on some small invisible metastatic lesions.

Drug therapy has a lethal effect on tumor cells, especially for tumor cells with fast proliferation and strong metabolism.

The hematopoietic cells and immune cells in the human body are also very active and proliferate very vigorously. These cells are also very sensitive to chemical drugs.

Therefore, drug treatment can not only destroy tumors, but also bring greater damage to the hematopoietic system and immune system. 

Another feature of drug therapy is that drug resistance is prone to appear. In most cases, the chance of drug resistance forming after half a year can be said to be very large.

Once the tumor recurrence or metastasis after drug treatment occurs, the previous treatment plan is basically It can’t be used anymore.

No matter what kind of treatment method, the principles that patients should master are:

Tumor treatment is a comprehensive treatment, especially for advanced tumors, it is difficult to obtain the best effect by only relying on a certain method;

Tumor treatment is also an individualized treatment. Different stages, tumor location, and size of the tumor will have different treatment plans. What is suitable for others is not necessarily suitable for yourself;

Tumor treatment should follow the trend, and do not force the elderly to do things beyond the reach of personal physical strength and modern medicine.

What are current mainstream treatments for tumor patients?

(source:internet, reference only)

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Important Note: The information provided is for informational purposes only and should not be considered as medical advice.