The uncertainty of cancer treatment

25 June 2018 | Features

Research has shown that the anti-cancer treatments have huge possibilities of causing death of the patient.

Cancer, one of the deadly diseases, has been growing day by day. It is the one that can develop in any part of the body. The negative or the cancerous cells keep growing in the body and cause death of the patient. Since the disease has kept on growing in the past, the researchers came up with a few treatments that could detect the cancerous cells and prevent them from growing. But the sad truth is, cancer still does not have a sure shot solution with the treatments having no side effects.

Chemotherapy and radiology are the two popular treatments that the cancer patients prefer opting. However, research has shown that these anti-cancer treatments have huge possibilities of causing death of the patient.

Chemotherapy

Chemotherapy is a solution to destroy the cancerous cells by poisoning them and getting them dead. While chemotherapy is one of the popular cancer treatments, it does have a huge lot of side effects. At times, the side effects are so vast that they cause the death of the patient. Various hospitals have seen 50% of deaths caused by chemotherapy.

The Cancer Research UK and Public Health England show that 8.4% of people with lung cancer and 2.4% people with breast cancer have died in a month of getting their treatments done.

However, in Milton Keynes, 50.9% of people diagnosed with lung cancer lost their lives when put on chemotherapy. There is a lot more statistics to prove that chemotherapy is not the ultimate solution to curing cancer.

28% people with lunch cancer under the palliative chemotherapy lost their lives. Moreover, at Cambridge University Hospitals, five people got palliative care for breast cancer but died from the treatment.

Why is the Chemotherapy not 100% successful?

While chemotherapy has cured many patients, it failed for many of them. The sole reason for the same is that the chemo is a toxin for the body. It fails to discriminate among the cancerous and the healthy cells. Thus, the patients who lack immune systems such as the poor or the old people could not bear the toxins affecting the healthy cells.

Common Side Effects of Chemotherapy

Cognition, Peripheral Neuropathy, Nausea, Xerostomia, dehydration, Anaemia, Neutropenia, Cardiomyopathy, Alopecia, skin sensitivity, infertility, osteoporosis and much more.  

Radiation therapy

The radiation therapy is another solution to curing cancer where the physicians use high energy x rays to kills the cancer cells. There are a number of treatments a patient goes through in a particular time period.

While it has shown success at the majority, the death rates of radiation pneumonitis have been ranging between 0 – 9.9% in 7 reports. The study shows 29 patients out of 1244, which is 2.3% of the patients have died due to pneumonitis post radiation therapy. It is known that the pulmonary fibrosis on the chest is a strong reason for death from radiation treatment.

Final Words

Having a big picture of the two popular cancer treatments, we know chemotherapy is more unsuccessful compared to the radiation therapy. However, radiation therapy has also been an unsuccessful one in various cases.

While the research and experiments have led to cancer treatments, it is essential for a cancer patient to understand not to panic and plan out for the therapy immediately. There are multiple other things you can try out before going for these therapies.

Consultation is one of the most critical factors for the cancer patients. Consulting good doctors, other cancer-prone people and identifying what type of cancer you’ve been going through is imperative.

Some of the alternatives are surgery, immunotherapy, hormone therapy, targeted therapy, stem cell transplant, precision medicines, etc. All you need to do is understand your problem, consult and then take a decision. If you have a financially dependent family, it is also imperative to consider taking insurance to make sure you do not leave any financial stress for them in future.      

Cancer Health Insurance

Cancer health insurance is quite a useful health insurance plan. This plan not only covers all stages of cancer, but you can also go for a second opinion from the panel of experts with the insurer. Thus, your diagnosis and treatment both can be scrutinised by more than one expert.

More than that, you need not maintain a separate cancer health insurance plan. You can add it to your existing or new term insurance plan thus, continuing both at the same time.

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