Certain types of leukemia and various cancers of the lymphatic sysetm are often effectively treated by this means. A combination of drugs is required because cancer cells can become resistant to therapy when only one drug is used for a time. In some instances, it appears that the cell membrane of resistant cancer cells contain a carrier that pumps the drug out of the cell. Chemotherapy is a brutal attack on all cells in your body.
Chemotherapy kills cancer cells and good healthy living cells.
It is a gamble that the chemo will kill more cancer cells than healthy cells. Chemotherapy can permanently destroy a patient's ability to produce sperm. If you want to have children in the future, sperm banking is suggested for men taking chemotherapy before the chemo treatments begin. Therefore, when a growth is malignant, surgery is often preceded by or followed by radiation therapy. Radiation destroys the more rapidly dividing cancer cells but causes less damage to the more slowly dividing normal cells.