What are the treatment options for cancer in all over the world?

What are the treatment options for cancer?

There are various, a whole list of treatment options are available for cancer patients,who have been diagnosed with cancer. It depends on the stage of cancer. As I told you, if it is in early-stage, only surgery is sufficient. Cancer treatment is divided into mainly surgical treatment i.e. cancer surgery,  What are the treatment options for cancer in all over the world? treatment i.e. medical oncology.

When the cancer is in the early stage

 In the treatable stage, in surgical stage, we remove the tumour along with good margins and along with the draining lymph nodes i.e.called radical cure. The possibility of cancer coming back will be very minimal. That is called surgical treatment of cancer. Then few cancers will require chemotherapy i.e. when we give some medicine, those arecancer-killing injections which we will give through the saline or glucose.That is called chemotherapy.

There are multiple drugs available for chemotherapy. Those chemotherapy drugs act on the cell cycle from the growth phase to–there are various phases in the cell cycle. Different drugs act on the different phases of the cell cycle, and they arrest the cell cycle so that reproduction from one cell to other cell will be arrested, and the cancer will stop. Third modality of treatment is radiation oncology, where there is a machine called as radiation suite.

Radiation therapy.

We have one of the best radiation machine available, which is called FFF technology. We call it as IMRT: Intensity Modulated Radiation Therapy, IGRT: Image Guided Radiation Therapy. Then there are different techniques. Those are called as cyber knife or gamma knife, where the high voltage x-rays being produced by the beam, and they will be  targeted to that particular tumour. those high voltage x-rays will disrupt the DNA and RNAs of the tumour, and they will kill the tumour.

So that is called radiation therapy. 

 What is Immunotherapy

There are now various other options available like immunotherapy. In immunotherapy, we improve our immunity, and we discover the new modalities of the drug, new drugs which will improve our immunity and can kill cancer cells.   That is called immunotherapy. 

Then there is gene therapy, where various genes; we can edit genes and cut down pathways in the genes or mutations so that we can arrest the tumour cell growth. There are other supportive therapies available like rehabilitation, or physiotherapy, or for example, when we do some breast cancer surgery, the patient will have a lymphedema or swelling of the hand. So we require a good physiotherapist to give exercise: head and neck cancer, neck exercise.

These are supportive specalities also available which will come into the picture as far as complete holistic cancer treatment is concerned. I will talk about one or two more recent advances which are in surgical technology of the treatment. As far as this is concerned, laparoscopic surgery or minimally invasive surgery.

We do open surgeries by opening the skin and removal of the tumour. Like laparoscopic cholecystectomy or laparoscopic appendicectomy, we can do laparoscopic cancer surgeries also for uterus removal, for oesophegal tumour, or other tumours. Those are called laparoscopic radical hystectomies or laparoscopic colorectal surgeries. Also, for the thorax, we do video-assisted thoracoscopic surgery. That is called as VATS. V-A-T-S - Video-Assited Thoracoscopic Surgeries which is Da Vinci robot.

It is installed, and the robots are also helping us to do the surgery. The advantage of robotic surgery in cancer is that human wrist has only sevem degrees of freedom. it will move in a few directions, but it will not move the way I want it to move. So the advanatage of robotic arm or robotic wrist is that it can move in any direction; the way I want it to. 

Where the anatomical constraints are there, where the tumour is situated very deep down in a critical area, there the robotic systems come into help for surgeons. Then we put the robotic arms into the abdomen or thorax, and we remove the tumour. The importance here is that we get ten times magnification, the tremors are less, and everything is under our control–the camera, the zoom.

Everything is under the surgeon's control. There is a robotic console where a surgeon will sit and the patient will be there on the trolley. Surgeon will not directly go and do operation on the trolley, but he will sit near the console. There will be sensors in his hands, and there will be few clutches like we have the car break and clutches in the foot paddles. 

The way I move my fingers or the way I move my leg, the camera will focus, it will zoom in, zoom out. Or the way I cut here, the same action will be reproduced into the patient abdomen or thorax by the robotic arm. It will either cut the tissue, or it will seal the bleeding, or it will take the stitches. The biggest advantage of the robotic system is patient recovery. it is very fast. The patient can quickly join his work. We can discharge him early.

He can join his work very early, and the scar is also very less. The pain of post-operative trauma or pain will be very less. Post-operative complications will also be very less. These are all in the nutshell. I have told you about the different treatment options available for cancer treatment. Basically, surgery, medical therapy or chemotherapy, and radiation therapy. These are broadly the treatment options available for cancer.