Chemotherapy - a method of treating malignant tumors with special drugs - chemotherapy drugs that cause the death of malignant cells. These drugs are also called cytotoxic drugs. Cytotoxic drugs belong to different groups of chemotherapy drugs and have different mechanisms of action, but their ultimate effect is to destroy tumor cells.
The action of chemotherapeutic agents to tumor cells due to the fact that due to genetic mutations that occur in these cells, they have a higher metabolism (metabolism), which ensures their rapid growth and development. Therefore, the tumor cells are very sensitive to the different interventions in their metabolism.
Unfortunately, chemotherapy also affect some healthy cells, which also have enhanced metabolic properties: it is the cells of the intestinal epithelium, hair follicles and bone marrow (the main hematopoietic organ). The action of cytostatic agents on these cells leads to the known side effects of chemotherapy of tumors.
Chemotherapy is usually performed cycles: after a period of treatment should be a period of recovery and so on.
Before starting chemotherapy must determine the histological type of tumor. Typically, chemotherapy is carried out not in isolation but in conjunction with other treatments, such as after surgery. In this case, if the surgical removal of the tumor was carried out, the definition of the histological type of tumor is performed using stereotactic biopsy. This is necessary for the reason that different types of tumors are sensitive to different chemotherapeutic drugs. In addition, before chemotherapy necessarily carried out to determine the individual patient's sensitivity to anticancer drugs.
Chemotherapy can be done in different ways:
System-in this case the drug is introduced to the patient intravenously or orally (oral)
Regionally - in this case the drug is introduced into the blood vessels located in the region of the tumor,
Intraarterially,
Intrathecally - chemotherapy in this method is introduced into the cerebrospinal fluid by lumbar puncture,
Interstitial - with this method, the chemotherapy drugs injected directly into the tumor tissue.
The most common chemotherapy drug is carried out not one, but a combination of several drugs.
Typically, chemotherapy for brain tumors used drugs such as carmustine and lomustine.
