eli5: Why cant they anesthetize chemo patients so they don’t feel the pain from chemotherapy?
In: Biology
Anaesthetics are actually a very dangerous type of medication. Not so much on a healthy person, but on people who are already suffering from illnesses like cancer, or treatments like chemo, it becomes much riskier.
It can be done if it’s necessary. The risk isn’t so high that it would never be done. But it’s just not worth the risk when you could instead administer pain medication.
And that’s forgetting the fact that chemo side effects are protracted. You couldn’t reasonably keep someone under to avoid all of the side effects of chemo. You’d have to keep them under for days at a time.
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