Cancer Therapies

Cancer is one of the leading causes of death in humans and is therefore considered an important health problem throughout the world.

Some of the most commonly used cancer therapies include surgery, radiotherapy, chemotherapy, immunotherapy, and hormone therapy.

Surgery is the surgical removal of a solid tumor that is contained in one area. For example, in the case of basal cell carcinoma, surgery is often used to remove the cancerous lesion and some of the surrounding healthy tissues.

However, in cases where removal of the whole tumor may cause damage to the organ or the body, surgery can be used to remove only a certain portion of the tumor. The remaining tumor cells can be treated with the help of other therapies.

Radiation therapy uses high doses of radiation to damage DNA inside the tumor cells. While tumor cells can usually tolerate minor DNA damage, they are hypersensitive to a higher amount of damage.

This means that while irradiated cancer cells can continue to divide for some time due to impaired cell cycle checkpoint responses, once they accumulate enormous DNA damage, it eventually leads to their death.

The surrounding normal cells can also be affected by the radiation,