Chemotherapy

Chemotherapy is a drug treatment to cure cancer. It is used to treat various types of cancers including breast cancer, cologne cancer, liver cancer, lung cancer and many others. Chemotherapy treatment can also be used to treat osteosarcoma.

Osteosarcoma is the bone cancer which is found commonly in children that are characterized by the production of osteoid or immature bone by the malignant cells. In osteosarcoma, cancer begin in bones and sometimes spread to the lungs or other bones while in other types of cancer, cancer spread to parts of the skeleton eventually. Osteosarcoma is most common in teens with growth spurt as it is usually develops from osteoblasts (the cells that make growing bone). Osteosarcoma is developed largely in boys than girls and in most cases of osteosarcoma involves the knee.

Osteosarcoma is developed largely because of random and unpredictable errors in the DNA of growing bone cells at the time of intense bone growth. Currently there is not any effective means available by which this type of cancer is prevented. However, if patients (mostly children) get proper diagnosis and treatment, they do recover.

Chemotherapy can be successfully used to treat osteosarcoma. Chemotherapy drugs when applied at initial stage of disease can eradicate these types of cancers. The treatment of osteosarcoma using preoperative (neo-adjuvant) chemotherapy, surgery, and postoperative (adjuvant) chemotherapy is a well-established paradigm that reduces the incidence of lung metastases and results in superior survival. Different chemotherapy regimens can be used to treat osteosarcoma. These regimens include adjuvant chemotherapy and neo-adjuvant chemotherapy which are applied mostly.

Adjuvant chemotherapy or postoperative chemotherapy is beneficial for improving survival in patients presenting with localized high-grade osteosarcoma compared to surgery alone. Today, adjuvant chemotherapy is considered as a standard component of osteosarcoma treatment, both in children as well as in adults.

With adjuvant or neo-adjuvant regimens of chemotherapy, the prognosis of patients with high-grade osteosarcoma of the extremity has improved significantly. However, the choice of chemotherapy treatment and correct timing of application (i.e. preoperative versus postoperative) are till controversial. However, in many cases preference is given to neo-adjuvant (preoperative) chemotherapy, especially when a limb sparing procedure is being contemplated for an extremity osteosarcoma.

Common chemotherapy treatment consists of cycle of five week. A commonly used regime for osteosarcoma has cycles of 5 weeks. Different chemotherapy drugs are used during cycle which includes cisplatin, doxorubicin and methotrexate. To control side effects associated with treatment, you need another drug through your drip called folinic acid for 2 to 3 days after your methotrexate treatment. You need to stay in hospital when drugs are given.

Over the last there decades, the survival of patients with malignant osteosarcoma has improved significantly because of chemotherapy treatment. Before use of the routine systemic chemotherapy, almost 80 percent of patients developed metastases rather achieving local tumor control and died of their disease. With the use of chemotherapy treatment for treating osteosarcoma, at least two third of patients can have long run survival.