eli5:Does everyone diagnosed cancer need chemotherapy?
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No. Some cancers (especially early stage reproductive cancers) can be cured with surgery, hormone therapies, and monitoring.
My endometrial cancer was cured by a hysterectomy, but it could have been treated with having a hormonal IUD. Part if the treatment is monitoring, and for the next few years I will be having 6 monthly reviews.
No.
If a solid cancer is caught early enough it can only need surgery and/or radiotherapy.
I have no personal experience with blood cancer, but I would assume all blood cancer would require chemotherapy as surgery isn’t an option and full-body radiotherapy wouldn’t be practical either.
I work in Urology right now.
Prostate cancer usually gets radiation therapy or removal of the prostate. The radiation is most often used, but for younger men (50s, early 60s) taking out the prostate may be the better solution.
Usually bladder cancer uses surgery to remove tumors and then BCG put into the bladder. If tumors return, you do it again. It’s usually more of a maintenance cancer.
So no, now all cancer needs chemotherapy. It depends on which type and how easy it is to spread throughout the body
Malign testicular cancer here. Much like the saying goes; I’d give my left testicle to avoid having cancer.
Yearly checkups for five years (blood samples and MRI). No other treatment. I was lucky.
I’ve had a small melanoma once. All that had to be done is cut a tiny bit of skin out
Apparently it’s the most serious, most invasive type of cancer, yet also extremely easy to treat if found early.
No. Many types of cancers can be treated without chemotherapy and instead through surgery, radiation therapy, hormone therapy and biological therapy or a combination of those.
To be prescribed chemotherapy will depend on the type of tumour and how sensitive it is to chemotherapy. Other factors can include how advanced the disease is and how the patient will tolerate chemotherapy. It can be used in combination with other treatments, for example chemotherapy can be given to make cancer cells more sensitive to radiation so it is given with radiation therapy to increase effectivity.
Not always. If it has not metastasized (spread through the body) it may not need chemo.
My melanoma was caught early and removed before it spread. Scans and tests didn’t find any evidence of spread or further cancer so I declined chemo. The doctor was recommending a treatment center out of state in texas.
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