Talk:Chemotherapy

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[edit] Definition

I was taught that chemotherapy is the use of synthetic agents to selectively injure particular organisms or cells within a patient. This includes anticancer, antibacterial, antiviral, antifungal and antiprotozoal chemotherapies. Natural and semisynthetic antibiotics are not included in a strict definition becuase they are natural compounds. The sulfonamides are synthetic "antibiotics" are so are true chemotherapeutic agents. I don't know about the natural-source anticancer drugs (vinca alkaloids and all that). The lay public thinks CHEMO = CANCER; I think it would be worth changing the slant of this article. Anyone else? ben 13:12, 23 June 2006 (UTC)

Probably the more recent "questionable" usage is so widespread that it eclipses the "proper" usage. This problem occurs elsewhere; i.e. begging the question. I think that a note about the etymology (that "chemo" means chemical and "chemotherapy" originally meant therapies using synthetic chemicals) might be approipriate, but a citation of that usage would be nice (a la the OED), and it may be hard to find a text online with that usage. MartinGugino 00:38, 6 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Side-effects

Current chemotherapeutic techniques can have a range of side effects mainly affecting the fast-dividing cells of the body. These include the mouth, digestive system, skin, hair and bone marrow.
Most frequent and most important side-effects of chemotherapy :

  • hair loss
  • vomiting
  • anaemia
  • depression of immunity hence infections
  • hemorrhage
  • secondary neoplasms
  • cardiotoxicity
  • hepatotoxicity
  • nephrotoxicity

The treatment can be exhausting physically for the patient.
Sometimes the complete myelosupression is the intended treatment that is in these cases followed by allogenic or autogenic stem cells transplant.

However some patients still develop diseases such as fungal tuberculosis because of this interference with bone marrow.

Isn't "fungal tuberculosis" a misnomer ?
I agree; tuberculosis isn't fungal. ben 13:06, 23 June 2006 (UTC)

"Mutations of normal cells creates cancerous tumours which can grow out of control."

Be careful, because most mutations to genetic information in cells will actually kill it. It is only in the relative minority of cases where a mutation will actually cause a cancer.

Jedi Dan 16:29 Apr 23, 2003 (UTC)

[edit] Chemo is deadly

Both my mother and father were killed by chemo.--Mr-Natural-Health 21:42, 7 Dec 2003 (UTC) (on talk:Alternative medicine)

It is sad that you lost both of your parents Mr-NH. It is a private event that sensitive people would usually refrain from referring to, but your comment raises points that really need addressing. Do the death certificates state that chemotherapy caused the deaths of your parents? As you are such a strong advocate for alternative medicine, could you not convince them to try that? Had they been exclusively using alternative medicine and had still died would you have written here "by the way, both my mother and father were killed by alternative medicine?" Moriori 22:15, Dec 7, 2003 (UTC)
Mr-Natural-Health is nuts if he believes that doctors killed his parents by trying to save their lives with chemotherapy. Apparently (if we are to take his word), his parents were killed by cancer, but at that point his [personal attack removed], so he decided to blame doctors. RK
That is tantamount to saying that the Doctors who treated George Washington in 1799 with repeated bleedings and dosages of calomel did not kill this founding Father of the United States. Following RK's logic, our president died from old age. What I call Quackery, is the science community conveniently leaving out the little detail that Chemo comes with a minor side effect called death.--Mr-Natural-Health 13:48, 13 Dec 2003 (UTC)
You may be right, but I'd prefer to hear what Mr-NH has to say. Moriori 01:30, Dec 8, 2003 (UTC)
Ha, ...Hah, Ha! I finally found this article on Chemotherapy and just now have discovered that my comments have arrived before me! Yes, Chemo is truly the heroic medicine of the modern era.--Mr-Natural-Health 12:52, 13 Dec 2003 (UTC)

I'm pretty sure that chemotherapy can be lethal, and that this is undisputed, rather than a sign of someone being nuts. For example, it reduces the immune system, so the patient may contract a fatal disease in their weakened state, be unable to fight it off, and subsequently die. That's why people undergoing chemotherapy are carefully monitored. In a few cases, chemotherapy may kill someone before their cancer would have done, had it been untreated. Chemotherapy is used because it helps more often than it causes harm, but it is not without side effects, and those side effects are potentially lethal. Martin 00:11, 9 Dec 2003 (UTC)

Quite right. Chemo causes substantial damage to the vascular system and many people later get cardio-vascular disease. Many of Mr NH's points were not frivolous. -- Viajero 00:15, 9 Dec 2003 (UTC)

I think this issue is hardly worth discussing. It is so obvious that chemotherapy although not without downsides is an important treatment modality. Eventually it will (hopefully) be replaced by better methods of fighting and preventing cancer but for the time being that's a tool that definitely has a place in cancer management. Period.

BTW antibiotic therapy can rarely cause fatal side-effects and chemotherapy can prolong life and properly used can cause less damage that the disease itself. So is antibiotic therapy to be abolished ?

Kpjas 16:18, 13 Dec 2003 (UTC)

I have a friend who got 3 years of Chemotherapy in just 6 months, she was also told that her life was gonna be shorter (50 to be exact, she's 23 at the time) clearly this is caused by this "overdose" and may infact cause death.
And this is why i have added death/shorter life as a side effect and is pretty much correct. But yes everything in a overdose can cause death but this is a medecine. Slushq 08:34, 11 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Splitting types?

Anybody object if I split the sections in "Types and dosage" onto their own subpages? --Arcadian 03:18, 23 November 2005 (UTC)

I don't know; the chemotherapy article as it stands isn't overly long—in total it still is less than 32 KB. If you're planning on expanding those sections significantly, then it might be appropriate to split it into a subarticle. (I could also see a benefit to giving parts of the article a good copyedit, but I haven't got the time right now....) TenOfAllTrades(talk) 04:03, 23 November 2005 (UTC)

We should minimally have alkylating agent and anthracycline, two major classes. I'm not convinced we need to have specific pages for the vinca alkaloids, the topoisomerase inhibitors etc. JFW | T@lk 08:47, 23 November 2005 (UTC)

Since we do already have pages for alkylating agent (and individual pages for a number of specific drugs) we could probably condense the section in this article a bit—describe the mechanism briefly and add a See main article: alkylating agent pointer. TenOfAllTrades(talk) 15:44, 23 November 2005 (UTC)
Okay, I chose the middle path -- I split out Alkylating agent, Antimetabolite, and Antineoplastic, because they already had existing pages, and some of the content on those pages had been gradually diverging from the content on this page. The other categories I left in. --Arcadian 18:58, 27 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Death, and Some other Notes.

Of course chemotherapy, can cause death. Why would chemicals not be able to kill you?

Shouldn't the story of Abraham Cherrix be added? Abraham is a 16 year old teen that has cancer and the court tried to force him into taking Chemotherapy.

Shouldn't there be something about criticism? There is a lot of criticism againsto chemo, and if it is a multi billion dollar industry there should be a lot of criticism against it.

Like is it being used just to make money?

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