Cancer Treatments and Side Effects: Chemotherapy and Immunotherapy

If you have been told that your cancer will be treated with chemotherapy. What does that mean exactly? Are the side effects as bad as you’ve heard? How effective is it? Why not another type of treatment? What about immunotherapy? These are important questions to ask your doctor, but to give you a head start, here is some basic information about these two common types of cancer treatment: chemotherapy and immunotherapy.

Chemotherapy

The use of drugs or medications to treat cancer is chemotherapy. Unlike surgery or radiation treatments that remove, remove, or damage cancer in a particular area, chemotherapy works throughout the body and can be used to kill cancer cells that have metastasized to other parts of the body. body. Chemotherapy can be used to cure cancer, control cancer, or as palliation.

Common side effects resulting from chemotherapy include fatigue, hair loss, easy bruising and bleeding, anemia, infection, changes in appetite, nausea and vomiting, diarrhea, constipation, mouth, tongue, and throat problems (such as pain when swallowing and sores). , nail and skin changes, bladder and urine changes, kidney problems, weight changes, mood swings, fertility problems, and changes in sexual function and libido. It is important to remember that just because all of these side effects exist does not mean that you will experience them. You may only have a few or possibly none. Chemotherapy treatment affects each person differently.

immunotherapy

Using the body’s immune system to fight cancer is known as immunotherapy. This can be done in one of two ways:

1. By stimulating your immune system to attack cancer cells or generally work harder.
2. Giving you immune system components, such as man-made proteins.

Immunotherapy works better for certain types of cancer than others. Sometimes it is used as a single treatment and other times along with other treatments. Immunotherapy can be given intravenously (IV), orally, topically, or intravesically (directly into the bladder). The main forms of immunotherapy used to treat cancer right now are:

1. monoclonal antibodies – Man-made proteins that can be designed to attack specific parts of cancer cells.
2. Immune checkpoint inhibitors – medicines that help the immune system to recognize and attack cancer cells.
3. cancer vaccines Substances introduced into the body to initiate an immune response.
4. Non-specific immunotherapies – These generally stimulate the immune system, which can help it attack cancer cells.

The side effects you may experience with immunotherapy treatment depend on the type of immunotherapy you receive, but in general, possible side effects include skin reactions at the needle site, flu-like symptoms (fever, chills, weakness, nausea, or vomiting). , dizziness, fatigue, joint or muscle pain, respiratory disorders, headache, high or low blood pressure), weight gain due to fluid retention, swelling, nasal congestion, heart palpitations and risk of infection.