Medical Informative Booklets
Chemotherapy
What you wish to know about Chemotherapy
(What does your treatment consist of ?)
In medicine, your treatment is called "chemotherapy" and consists of the administration of drugs that will either avoid a recurrence and improve your chances of recovery or control the disease, and hence increase the duration and the comfort of your life.
This treatment has a general action on the disease, whatever its localisation.
Chemotherapy kills abnormal cells during their multiplication period. This is how they are destroyed after a variable number of cures, depending on each case.
In order to multiply, healthy cells also have to divide, but less rapidly than abnormal cells. So, these healthy cells will also be exposed to chemotherapy; which partly explains its side effects. Healthy cells will regenerate mostly during the rest interval between two treatment periods.
For each patient the specialist doctor will determine the drugs, the dose and the method of administration that suits his patient best.
This choice depends on the type of disease and on its localisation. The administered dose will also depend on the patient's height and weight.
Cures will generally be repeated every 3-4 weeks.
Most drugs require an intravenous administration.
The drugs are injected into the vein and blood-circulation will pump it through your whole body.
What does a chemotherapy session look like ?
Less frequently, patients are given intramuscular or subcutaneous injections (injection into the muscle or under the skin).
Some drugs can be taken orally (i.e. through the mouth).
This method of administration is used whenever possible, however, some drugs are poorly resorbed by the digestive canal.
In some cases, nausea and vomiting may be obstacles to this way of administration, since non-absorbed drugs will have no therapeutic effects.
When the drug is administered into a vein, it is either through a direct injection or a more or less prolonged perfusion.
An implantable chamber is frequently used when chemotherapy is administrated intravenously.
This means that a small injection chamber (reservoir) is placed under the skin (under local anaesthesia).
This system is called Port-A-Cath® or PAC. A thin tube (a catheter in medical terms) will link this injection chamber to a big neck vein. This technique is more comfortable because it makes all intravenous injections much easier and it allows the withdrawal of blood.
At the end of the treatment, the implantable chamber can either be removed, under local anaesthesia again, or kept for several months or even years.
There are three ways to administer the drugs :
- In outpatient care :
I.e., in the day hospital where the patient stays the few hours it takes to administer the treatment and then goes back home on the same day.
- In hospitalisation :
This hospitalisation lasts one or more days, either because the reaction of your organism to the treatment has to be watched or because the administration of your chemotherapy takes several days or requires the administering of a big quantity of fluid.
- At home :
When your doctor has previously determined the exact dose of drugs the patient has to take orally.
The patient will generally have to undergo a blood test and see his doctor before each treatment.
After having received the prescribed number of cures, your doctor will have some examinations done, to get information on the general efficiency of your treatment.
+32 2 541 31 11