Chemotherapy Flashcards
What is chemotherapy
Treatment that uses drugs to stop the growing of cancer cells by destroying them or stopping them from dividing.
What are the 4 different uses of chemotherapy:
- Curative (able to cure)
- Adjuvant (chemo after primary treatment to lower risk of repeating)
- Maintenance (giving after initial therapy- prevent relapse may be on for life)
- Palliative - prolong life, relieve symptoms, QoL
What is important to ask patients on maintenance chemotherapy and why?
If there treatment includes taking bisphosphonates as increases risk of jaw osteonecrosis
4 Types of chemotherapy
- Cytotoxic therapy
- Hormone therapy
- Targeted therapy
- Immunotherapy
What does cytotoxic chemotherapy do and what other areas does it affect?
Cytotoxic - most invasive
Exploits fact that malignant cells divide more rapidly behaving differently to normal cells
Affects - oral mucosa, hair follicles & bone marrow
What is hormonal chemotherapy and what cancers is it mostly used in
Only to be used when there is a hormonal drive
breast & prostrate
4 Oral side effects of hormonal therapy
increased gingival inflammation
gingival bleeding
xerostomia
oral burning
What is targeted chemotherapy
made to TARGET specific areas:
DNA changes limited to only cancer cells
Protein only found in cancer cells
Proteins increased in cancer cells
Mechanism of targeted therapy
Trigger immune system to target and destroy cancer cells
stop blood vessels growing to feed cancer & carry toxins into cancer cells
What is immunotherapy
Helps to BOOST immune system to destroy cancer cells
What area in the mouth is most common for metastatic cancer cells to spread
mandible molar region
Dental side effects (particularly in cytotoxic chemotherapy) short term (acute group) long term (maintenance group)
Short term: mucositis (severe inflammation in oral mucosa), infection, bleeding, taste disturbance, xerostomia
Long term: oral cancer, jaw osteonecrosis
