Talk:Chemoradiotherapy

Need more detail

• Is it full dose CT and RT or are they scaled back ?
• what chemo typically used - for sequential or concurrent - for various cancer types ?
  • eg is it usually a cancer specific CT + a radiosensitizing agent ?
• are the radiosensitizing agents chosen by type of cancer ?
• How are the CT and RT divided and interleaved when concurrent ?
• if sequential; is it always C before R ? - Rod57 (talk) 15:39, 29 January 2017 (UTC)

Recent addition, October 2017

The following text was recently added to the article:

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Side-Effects The side-effects of chemoradiotherapy are fairly consistent across cancer types. One out of ten people may experience each of these side effects of chemoradiotherapy, including. Tiredness, breathlessness, sickness, mouth sores, redness or darkness in the treatment area, and sadly so much more. Patients report feeling very tired, weak, and in energetic during treatment, and these symptoms tend to worsen during treatment; after a while, some patients need to sleep after each radiotherapy session. The chemotherapy component also makes the level of red blood cells fall (anemia), resulting in less oxygen going to the cells, which in turn results in breathlessness and pallor. Feeling or being sick can be severe. It can start a few hours after treatment and last for a few days. Anti sickness injections and tablets can control it. Dr.s may need to prescribe different sickness medicines until the one that works is found. Your mouth might become sore about 5 to 10 days after you start treatment. It usually clears up gradually 3 to 4 weeks after your treatment ends.Your doctor or nurse can give you mouthwashes to help prevent infection. Patients Insist you have to use these regularly to get the most protection. Patients usually report to Dr’s right away if their mouth is really sore. They can help to reduce the discomfort. Some people need strong painkillers to help control mouth pain so they can eat and drink. Your skin might go red or darker in the radiotherapy treatment area. You may also get redness or darkening on the other side of your body. This is where the radiotherapy beams leave the body. Radiotherapy staff are the ones you can go to if you notice any skin changes.The red or darker areas can also be sore. The skin usually starts to slowly change after several radiotherapy sessions. Your nurse or radiographer will give you cream to soothe the area.If the skin gets very sore it might peel and blister. This usually starts to settle down within 2 to 4 weeks of ending the treatment. (Cancer Research UK) Pancreatic Cancer Adding radiation to chemotherapy does not improve overall survival rates in patients with locally advanced pancreatic cancer with controlled disease after 4 months of induction therapy. Chemoradiation has the potential to decrease metastases and convert inoperable tumors into resectable ones. Results from at least five randomized, controlled trials that compared chemoradiotherapy with chemotherapy have been conflicting. Some studies have suggested a survival advantage for patients who receive induction therapy followed by chemoradiotherapy. While pancreatic cancer survival rates have been improving from decade to decade, the disease is still considered incurable. According to the American Cancer Society, for all stages of pancreatic cancer combined, the one-year survival rate is 20%, and the five-year rate is 7%. (Martin) Patients with locally advanced cervical cancer should continue to be treated with chemoradiotherapy and not be initially offered chemotherapy alone followed by radical surgery, conclude Indian researchers who compared the two approaches in a randomized controlled trial. data collected by the National Cancer Data Base from people diagnosed between 2000 and 2002. These are the most recent statistics available for survival by the current staging system. Survival Rates For Pancreatic Cancer The 5-year survival rate for people with stage 0 cervical cancer is about 93%. For stage IA cervical cancer, the 5-year survival rate is about 93% For stage IB cancer, the 5-year survival rate is about 80%. For stage IIA cervical cancer, the 5-year survival rate is about 63%. For stage IIB cancer, the 5-year survival rate is about 58%. The 5-year survival rate for stage IIIA cervical cancer is about 35%. For stage IIIB cancer, the 5-year survival rate is about 32% Stage IVA cervical cancer has a 5-year survival rate of about 16%, and stage IVB cancer has a 5-year survival rate of about 15%. Still, there are often treatment options available for women with these stages of cancer. Remember, these survival rates are only estimates – they can’t predict what will happen to any individual person. (Journal of Clinical Oncology Journal) Esophageal Cancer The combined chemoradiotherapy can be effective against some early stage esophageal cancers. Esophageal cancer causes fairly dramatic symptoms, including bruising, bleeding gums or nosebleeds, mouth sores and ulcers, difficulty swallowing, loss of taste or a metallic taste in the mouth, skin sensitivity to sunlight, hair loss or thinning, and more. Cancers that start in the esophagus are much more common in men than in women, and are often linked to tobacco or alcohol use, or to excess body weight. While some types of esophageal cancer can be treated with targeted therapy, immunotherapy, systemic drug therapies, or chemotherapy without radiotherapy, esophageal cancer starts on the inside lining of the esophagus and spreads outward through the other layers as it grows. People with advanced cancer that has spread beyond the esophagus, chemotherapy may be used alone to help relieve signs and symptoms caused by the cancer. Radiation therapy is most often combined with chemotherapy in people with esophageal cancer. It's typically used before surgery, or occasionally after surgery. Radiation therapy is also used to relieve complications of advanced esophageal cancer, such as when a tumor grows large enough to stop food from passing to your stomach. Combining chemotherapy and radiation therapy may enhance the effectiveness of each treatment. Combined chemotherapy and radiation may be the only treatment you receive, or combined therapy can be used before surgery. But combining chemotherapy and radiation treatments increases the likelihood and severity of side effects. Esophageal cancer can also be treated using drugs, which can be given by mouth or directly into the bloodstream. These are called systemic therapies because they travel through your whole system, allowing them to reach cancer cells almost anywhere in the body. Stages of esophageal cancer are: Stage in situ. Cancerous cells are visible microscopically on the lining of the esophagus but have not invaded the deeper parts of the inner lining of the esophagus. Stage I. This cancer occurs in the superficial layers and has begun to invade the first layers of the inner lining of your esophagus and may have spread to nearby lymph nodes. Stage II. The cancer has invaded deeper muscular layers of your esophagus and may have spread to nearby lymph nodes. Stage III. The cancer has spread to the deepest layers of the wall of your esophagus — through the muscle layers — and to nearby tissues or lymph nodes. Stage IV. The cancer has spread to other parts of your body Bowel Cancer Bowel cancer is a general term for cancer that begins in the large bowel. Depending on where the cancer starts, bowel cancer is sometimes called colon or rectal cancer.Bowel cancer is one of the most common types of cancer diagnosed. Most people diagnosed with it are over the age of 60. The three main symptoms of bowel cancer are; persistent blood in the stools, that occurs for no obvious reason or is associated with a change in bowel habit, a persistent change in your bowel habit, which usually means going more often, with looser stools, persistent lower abdominal pain, bloating or discomfort, that's always caused by eating and may be associated with loss of appetite or significant unintentional weight loss. References

I have removed the text and preserved it here for discussion. The text is improperly informal in tone, spottily sourced, and involves a large amount of information that is redundant with other articles, and/or irrelevant to the article at hand. I point specifically to the following concerns:

• The "Side Effects" section lists side effects that would normally be expected of either chemotherapy or radiation therapy, but does not specify whether there are specific side effects that arise from the combination of the two therapies.
• The section titled "Survival Rates for Pancreatic Cancer" goes on to list the survival rates for cervical cancer. Neither collection of information is relevant to the article at hand, unless it can be demonstrated that the survival rate in question is affected by chemoradiotherapy.
• The section on Bowel Cancer goes into some detail about the definition of bowel cancer but gives no information about the relevance of chemoradiotherapy to bowel cancer.

I recommend to this information's author (@Kjcrideredu:) that they work on the text here and ask for review by other users prior to re-introducing the text. WikiDan61^ChatMe!_ReadMe!! 17:21, 25 October 2017 (UTC)