Intraoperative Imaging Blog

Chemotherapy is the use of drugs to kill bacteria, viruses, fungi and cancer cells. The term most often refers to drugs to fight cancer and this article focuses on chemotherapy to treat this disease.
Chemotherapy drugs can be administered orally or by injection. Because the drugs travel through the bloodstream throughout the body, chemotherapy is a systemic treatment.

Chemotherapy may be used to:

* Curing cancer
* To prevent the cancer from spreading
* Ease symptoms (when the cancer can not be cured)

Usually, the target of the chemotherapy are rapidly dividing cells. However, normal cells, including those found in the blood, hair and the lining of the gastrointestinal tract also divide very quickly, which means that the chemotherapy will cause harm or kill these healthy cells. When this occurs, there may be side effects such as nausea, anemia and hair loss. Some people who receive chemotherapy also have fatigue, nerve pain and infection.

Side effects of chemotherapy depend on many things, including the type of cancer and specific drugs used. Newer chemotherapy drugs that better target cancer cells may cause fewer side effects.