This usually involves medicine being given slowly from a bag of fluid that's attached with a tube to one of your veins. The time it takes to get a dose of intravenous chemotherapy can range from several hours to several days. You'll need to go into hospital at the start of each treatment session to get the tablets and have a check-up, but you can take the medicine at home.
Make sure you follow the instructions given by your care team. Taking too much or not enough medicine may reduce its effectiveness and could be dangerous. Contact your care team if you have any problems with your medicine, such as forgetting to take a tablet or being sick shortly after taking one. Women should avoid becoming pregnant while having chemotherapy, as many chemotherapy medicines can cause birth defects.
Use a barrier method of contraception, such as a condom , and contact your care team immediately if you think you may have become pregnant. Men having chemotherapy should use condoms throughout their course of treatment, even if their partner is using contraception.
Cancer Research UK has more about sex and chemotherapy. While you're having chemotherapy, check with your care team before you take any other medicine — including over-the-counter medicines and herbal remedies. And it's sometimes used with other drugs, such as targeted therapy, hormone therapy, or immunotherapy. For example, chemo may be used In some cases, the best choice of doses and schedules for each chemo drug is clearly known and based on research studies.
In other cases, less may be known about the best way to treat certain types and stages of cancer. Or, a patient might have another health condition that makes the doctor think a certain treatment is not the best choice because of side effects or other possible problems. In these cases, different doctors might choose different drug combinations with different schedules. The team takes all these factors into account, along with information from research studies published in medical journals and textbooks describing the outcomes of similar patients treated with chemo.
Most chemotherapy chemo drugs are strong medicines that have a fairly narrow range for dose safety and effectiveness. Taking too little of a drug will not treat the cancer well and taking too much may cause life-threatening side effects.
For this reason, doctors must calculate chemo doses very carefully. Depending on the drug s to be given, there are different ways to determine chemo doses. Most chemo drugs are measured in milligrams mg. Some chemo doses are determined based on body surface area BSA , which are calculated using height and weight.
These include the type of cancer, the extent of cancer, the types of drugs that are given, as well as the expected toxicities of the drugs and the amount of time necessary to recover from these toxicities. Many chemotherapy treatment schedules including the type and length of chemotherapy treatment have been determined through clinical trials that compared them and determined which had the most benefit and was most well tolerated.
In general, chemotherapy treatment is given in cycles. This allows the cancer cells to be attacked at their most vulnerable times, and allows the body's normal cells time to recover from the damage. The duration of each session depends on its form. Oral and topical chemotherapy are less time-consuming. In oral chemo , you take the drug by mouth. The drug might be in the form of a:.
Chemotherapy infusions can last several hours or days. Your healthcare provider can let you know how long each session will likely take. Keep in mind that every treatment center is different. To prepare, ask your healthcare professional what amenities and services will be available. As chemotherapy destroys cancer cells, it also harms healthy cells. This includes cells in your digestive system and hair, along with cells that produce blood. In turn, chemo can cause various side effects.
Some side effects go away quickly, while other side effects can last longer than the actual treatment. These effects can last months or years. This means that chemotherapy can technically take much longer beyond the treatment itself.
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