List the three most common categories of cancer treatments. Why do many cancer treatments have u

List the three most common categories of cancer treatments....

Key Concepts

Cancer Treatment Modalities

Cancer treatment modalities refer to the primary methods used to combat cancer, which typically include surgery (the physical removal of tumors), chemotherapy (the use of drugs to kill rapidly dividing cells), and radiation therapy (the use of high-energy radiation to target and destroy cancer cells). These modalities differ in their approach and mechanism, with the choice of treatment depending on factors such as the type, location, and stage of the cancer.

Mechanism Behind Unpleasant Side Effects

Many cancer treatments result in unpleasant side effects because they are designed to target rapidly dividing cells, a characteristic of cancer. However, these therapies are not entirely specific to cancer cells and often affect healthy cells that also divide quickly, such as those in the hair follicles, gastrointestinal tract, and bone marrow. This collateral damage leads to a range of side effects, from nausea and fatigue to hair loss and increased risk of infection.

Transcript

00:01 This video deals with cancer treatments and why they have negative side effects.

00:07 Up here on the board, i have written the three most common classes of cancer treatment, surgery, chemotherapy, and radiation therapy.

00:17 Now, the question is often asked, why do cancer treatments make people so sick? and it's really quite simple.

00:25 For surgery, it doesn't explain, we don't have to explain all that much.

00:28 Surgery, we have cut open a patient.

00:31 We have removed the cancerous region, but then on top of that, we need to excise the margins.

00:38 So that means that if we're performing surgery, we have a tumor, but then we also have a margin around the tumor that needs to be cut out in order to ensure that we got it all.

00:52 This means that a large mass has been removed, and that leads to feeling sick as well as other negative side effects.

01:01 Chemotherapy is effectively poison.

01:06 It's targeted poison towards the cancer, but it is still poison nonetheless.

01:14 And there are multiple different types of chemotherapy.

01:17 Specifically, there are chemotherapies that will target blood flow and effectively just poison any quickly dividing cell.

01:29 Now, this is effective because most of your normal cells, your healthy cells, are not quickly dividing.

01:38 They are relatively slow in dividing.

01:42 They spend most of their life cycle just in g1, but quickly dividing cells, cancer cells, have a very short g1 phase and will then divide.

01:55 Extremely fast.

02:00 Chemotherapy kills that type of cell.

02:02 This is the reason why people on chemotherapy lose their hair and their fingernails because fingernails and hair are very quickly dividing cells.

02:13 So they are casualties of the chemotherapy treatment...

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