Monday, April 30, 2012

Minimal Side Effects of Cancer Treatment

Cancer treatment technology keep growing. However, based on international health standards, the treatment of cancer consists of chemotherapy action, surgery, and radiation. Unfortunately, those conventional methods are still not ideal because not all patients wasn't strong enough to face the side effects of the treatment.


In the past, China's treatment is identical with herbs, but now they are developing new methods that combine Western and Eastern medicine.

Chemotherapy are not only attacks cancer cells but also healthy cells. Most patients also have to struggle with side effects such as nausea, weakness and hair loss. Innovation in tumors treatment are enough to give  maximum result with minimal side effects.

China is the country that most aggressively developed the method. minimally invasive method is a method that attack only cancer cells in patient's body, so the side effects can be localized and only cause minor injuries.


Lin Zhi Cheng, chairman of medical group modern hospital at Guangzhou, said the focus of treatment with minimally invasive methods are long term, complete, efficient and rapid convalescence.

"In the past, Chinese treatment was identical with herbal medicine, but we are now developing methods to combine Western and Eastern medicine. Cancer is  critical illness so when combined with eastern method it will faster patient recovery," he said.

At Guangzhou modern hospital, there are 5  superior minimally invasive therapy techniques, such as intra-arterial intervention (local chemotherapy), radio particle seeds planting, radio frequency ablation, cyrosurgery (freezing tumor cells), as well as nanotechnology methods.

According to dr. Peng Xiao Chi, chairman of Guangzhou modern hospital oncology team, the type and method of treatment will be chosen based on the type of cancer, how strong the cancer and the condition of patient. But the point is to kill cancer cells by variety of ways.

"Sometimes patients have to perform two or more methods, for example if it has spread to other organs. After one treatment method, it will be evaluated to determine next methods will be used," said Peng.

He added the success rate of early stage cancer with minimally invasive methods achieving 90 percent, whereas in middle stage cancer the success rate reached 60 percent. In late stage cancer, the treatment aims to prolong life and reduce pain.

Minimally invasive treatment methods, according to Lin, was actually developed in big countries like United States and several countries in Europe. However, it is believed that China doctors experiences is higher because of high population in China.

"Let's pick heart bypass as example, doctors in U.S. can do this action 10 times a month, while the doctors here can do it 4 times a day," said Lin.

Peng added, cancer doctor in Guangzhou averagely can perform local chemotherapy up to 2,000 times per year.

In terms of cost, minimally invasive method is more expensive than conventional methods. For example, this local chemotherapy method need at least 15,000 RMB (about USD 22 million) not including the cost of room and medicine.

Although minimally invasive method is quite effective against cancer, not all cancers can be treated with this method. Leukemia cancer must be treated with To conventional chemotherapy. There are also some type of cancer that had to be dissected. All depends on  type and location of the cancer.

In practice, cancer therapy is a systematic project which focus on patient to increase life expectancy and quality of life.

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