Chemotherapy, a common cancer treatment, uses highly toxic drugs to kill cancer cells. Upon entering the cancer cell, chemotherapy drugs typically interfere with molecules within the cell and prevent cell division, halting cancer growth. The drugs also often activate cell death pathways, promoting tumor shrinkage. Chemotherapy can be used either alone or as part of a multifaceted cancer treatment strategy.
Widespread Efficacy
One major advantage of chemotherapy is the widespread nature of its effectiveness. Chemotherapy drugs act as general toxic agents in the body, targeting rapidly proliferating cells, including cancer cells. Although this widespread action can lead to harmful side effects -- such as healthy tissue damage during chemotherapy -- the general toxic nature of chemotherapy drugs means they can kill cancer cells, regardless of the cells' genetic background. This provides an advantage over more target therapies which may only target cancer cells with a specific genetic mutation; while the targeted therapy may kill only a population of cancer cells, a chemotherapy drug likely has a toxic effect on almost all cancer cells. As a result, patients may respond positively to chemotherapy even after targeted treatments have failed, and may successfully use chemotherapy to fight cancer growth.
Whole-Body Treatment
Another advantage of chemotherapy is whole-body treatment. While some other therapies, such as radiotherapy or cancer surgery, remove cancer in a specific region or tissue of the body, chemotherapy can treat cancer growth in multiple tissues at once. The Eye Cancer Network explains that systemic chemotherapy involves injecting chemotherapy drugs into a patient's veins, allowing the drug to travel throughout the body. Since the entire body becomes exposed to the chemotherapy drug, the drug can kill small colonies of tumor growth in any tissue, allowing doctors to target any cancer cell in the body. As a result, chemotherapy often proves effective in controlling the growth of metastatic cancers, or cancers in which tumors grow in multiple organs.
Pain Relief
In some cases, chemotherapy can lend the advantage of pain relief by controlling cancer growth. Many patients with advanced cancer experience significant pain associated with cancer growth, as tumors may press on nerves and lead to chronic pain, while metastatic cancer growth in the lung can decrease lung functioning and make it painful to breathe. Chemotherapy can help doctors partially shrink cancerous growths, easing the pressure on surrounding tissues and improving organ function -- essentially increasing patient quality of life. Chemotherapy for pain relief, called palliative chemotherapy, is often given to patients with incurable cancer, according to the Colon Cancer Resource.
