1. Conventional Means of Bone Metastasis Treatment
Your doctor will likely suggest one of the three approaches to bone metastasis treatment: systemic therapy, local therapy or surgery. Systemic therapy uses the blood as a channel for reaching diseased bones and may be taken in pill form or injected. Chemotherapy and hormone treatments are common systemic approaches, and your doctor may also recommend the use of bisphosphonates to help strengthen brittle bones. You might also receive immune system boosting systemic therapies and drugs that deliver jolts of radiation to cancerous growths in your bones.
Local therapy directs aggressive treatment at a specific part of your body. To treat the spread of cancer, the most commonly used local therapy is radiation, particularly external beam radiation. This treatment uses a precise laser beam to focus radiation at a cancerous growth, with the aim of retarding its spread and shrinking its size. If radiation therapy doesn't have the intended effect, your doctor may suggest another form of local therapy known as radiofrequency ablation.
If you have a bone tumor that's causing you significant pain and isn't responding to radiation, you can get an electrical current injected straight into the tumor. This current attacks the cancerous growth and delivers painkillers to ease your comfort. The goal of surgical treatments is usually to decrease your discomfort and alleviate your symptoms, not to remove the cancerous growth from your bones. Usually, surgery is followed by radiation, a combination of therapies to which many patients respond well.
2. Ask Your Doctor About Clinical Trials
You might choose to participate in a clinical trial, which offer new, unproven therapies that may help stop the spread of cancer. However, these trials come at some risk to the patient, since the side effects of these experimental therapies are often not fully understood.
There are three types of clinical trials for cancer patients. Phase I trials determine proper administration methods and dosages of new treatments that have been proven effective in initial lab tests. You might take part in a Phase II trial, which is designed to determine whether and how well a new drug or treatment method works. Finally, Phase III trials use large control groups; one receives a proven therapy and the other an experimental therapy. Over time, these control groups are monitored for progress and side effects.
3. Explore Alternative Treatment Options
Holistic, herbal and traditional medicine practices can also be applied to spreading cancers, but doctors are divided as to their efficacy. Some treatments appear to have benefits while others have been clinically proven to be ineffective. Vitamin and herbal treatments, massage and acupuncture treatments are available to help cancer patients through practitioners of traditional medicine. Your oncology team can direct you to local resources if you're interested in pursuing these treatments.
