“Cancer” remains a dreaded disease that everyone fears due to its severity, often showing symptoms only at an advanced stage. The medical field has developed technologies and treatment methods for cancer to keep up with the potential dangers faced by patients as much as possible. This can be considered a new hope for cancer treatment if these modern methods and technologies are fully applied to patients.
2 Treatment Methods: New Hope for Cancer Treatment
The current cancer treatment process has been developed to be more effective, reducing side effects while enhancing treatment efficacy simultaneously. The current cancer treatments, regarded as new hopes for cancer therapy, can be divided into two major groups as follows:
- Integrative Treatment of Cancer
Medical advancements and expertise in various cancer treatment fields have increased significantly, especially in pharmacogenetics, which has helped the medical community understand the relationship between genes, genetics, and immunology. This has led to the production of targeted cancer therapies that effectively inhibit cancer cell growth directly without damaging normal cells, unlike traditional chemotherapy. The important cancer treatment technologies today can be divided into three groups as follows:
- Supportive Treatments Group
- Rehabilitation for chemotherapy patients
- Natural therapy treatments
- Use of nutritional therapy and nutritional support
- Specialized Oncology Treatments Group
- Cancer surgery
- Chemotherapy
- Use of advanced radiotherapy and diagnostic radiology
- Use of targeted cancer therapy
- Immunotherapy and biological treatments (cancer vaccines/hormone therapy)
- Palliative Care Group
- Psychological support
- Building relationships with patients to support both physically and mentally
- Pain management
- Counseling for families, especially understanding hereditary cancer
- Personalized Cancer Treatment Planning by a Multidisciplinary Team of Cancer Experts (MDT Cancer)
As mentioned earlier, cancer treatment technology today has advanced beyond the capability of a single specialist. Moreover, treatment effectiveness may decrease if patients receive treatment at inappropriate times, which varies among patients.
The multidisciplinary team for integrative cancer treatment, or MDT Cancer, is an integration of specific cancer treatments tailored appropriately for individual cancer patients. It is an effective cancer treatment process because it involves consideration and discussion of benefits, drawbacks, quality of life, treatment outcomes, and patient expectations by a team of experts in various oncology fields, including:
- Cancer surgeons
- Gynecologic oncologists
- Medical oncologists
- Pathologists
- Diagnostic radiologists
- Radiation oncologists
- Pharmacogenetics specialists
- Cancer specialist nurses
- etc.
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They collaborate to determine the appropriate treatment approach at the right time, creating a personalized plan for each patient. This plan details the technologies used and the sequence of processes, which differ for each patient. Even if patients have the same type and stage of cancer, their genetic conditions, expectations, and other details vary, resulting in different treatment plans.
It can be seen that sequencing effective cancer treatments within the correct timeframe is a crucial factor that can change outcomes and enhance patient expectations. Personalized cancer treatment planning by a multidisciplinary team of cancer experts (MDT Cancer) is therefore considered a new hope for cancer treatment and is widely accepted in major cancer treatment centers in Europe and America today.
