Health rumors that most cancer patients die from chemotherapy? Fake! Rumor: The online article says that the 5-year survival rate of chemotherapy is only 2.3%, and many people who died of cancer died of chemotherapy rather than cancer. The article quoted papers as saying that the 5-year survival rate of cancer patients in Australia is 60%, but the 5-year survival rate of chemotherapy alone is only 2.3%, while that in the United States is even less, only 2. 1%. 50% of cancer patients died of chemotherapy drugs (within 30 days of chemotherapy), not cancer itself.
Truth: This is also a rumor that will be transformed every once in a while, which has caused great trouble to patients. Some patients are even induced to give up the treatment of modern medicine and try some non-mainstream treatment methods, which leads to the delay of illness and even the loss of life.
Zhang Xiaotian, chief physician of the Department of Gastroenterology, Peking University Cancer Hospital, pointed out in an interview with the media that this article seems plausible, but the data cited are basically false. Many of the data listed in this paper have no references, and there is no clear source of the paper. The expression of the effectiveness of chemotherapy is also far from the current research conclusions in the medical field.
Precautions for chemotherapy Chemotherapy is different from local treatment such as surgery and radiotherapy. Chemotherapy is a systemic treatment. A large number of international multi-center studies have proved that chemotherapy has a definite therapeutic effect on most tumors and is an important treatment method for tumors, and its status is irreplaceable at present.
But many people still have many questions about chemotherapy:
Doubt 1: Is tumor staging related to tumor size?
Clinically, many patients and their families believe that small tumors belong to the early stage and large tumors belong to the late stage. Take lung cancer as an example. Even small lesions smaller than 1cm can cause lymph node metastasis, even to adrenal gland, liver and other places. To be exact, the tumor size is related to the stage, but it is not absolutely related. Early, middle and late clinical stages are mainly related to whether lymph nodes and distant organs "metastasize".
Doubt 2: Will chemotherapy shorten life?
Clinically, family members often say that patients can eat and drink before chemotherapy, and they have poor appetite and are bedridden after chemotherapy. Maybe they will live longer without chemotherapy. In fact, chemotherapy is the only effective treatment for patients with advanced malignant tumor at present, but the effective rate of tumor regression is 30%-50%, and nearly half of patients may be ineffective. Compared with the extreme phenomenon of fear of chemotherapy, there is another phenomenon that I hope all kinds of treatment methods are used and fall into the misunderstanding of overtreatment. For example, an 83-year-old lung cancer patient received chemotherapy, and local doctors had different opinions on whether to carry out radiotherapy. The lung function of the elderly is poor. If he is given lung radiotherapy at this time, it is likely to have the opposite effect.
Question 3: Is it better to use domestic drugs or imported drugs in chemotherapy?
If economic conditions permit, patients are advised to use imported drugs, because anti-tumor drugs produced in Europe and America have always been at the forefront of the industry. In particular, we should remind everyone that tumors are different from bacteria. Antibiotics should be used at a low level when treating bacteria, but tumor treatment must minimize the number of tumor cells with the most effective drugs in a unit time. Because once there are more and more tumor cells, the number of tumor stem cells also increases, and tumor stem cells are not sensitive to radiotherapy and chemotherapy.
Reasons for misunderstanding chemotherapy
First, chemotherapy has great toxic and side effects.
Chemotherapy is a double-edged sword. If you don't master it well, it will bring risks and dangers to patients. Therefore, chemotherapy must be standardized, and a reasonable chemotherapy plan should be formulated by a specialist and carried out in a qualified medical institution.
Second, at present, most advanced cancers cannot be cured.
Although chemotherapy can prolong the patient's life, with the progress of the disease, the patient will eventually die, which is easy to lead to the misunderstanding that chemotherapy leads to the patient's death. For example, patients with advanced small cell lung cancer die after receiving chemotherapy for more than 1 year, which is easily misunderstood as chemotherapy leading to patient death. In fact, patients benefit from chemotherapy because the untreated survival time of advanced small cell lung cancer is only about 3 months.
Precautions for cancer patients during chemotherapy
1, emotional stability
Clinical practice shows that people who have doubts, fears and fears about chemotherapy often have serious adverse drug reactions during chemotherapy. Patients who are calm, open-minded and emotionally stable have much lighter reactions. Therefore, all cancer patients who need chemotherapy should have the confidence to win, go to chemotherapy in a happy mood, reduce adverse reactions and achieve better results.
Step 2 eat a reasonable diet
During chemotherapy, patients will have gastrointestinal reactions such as oral ulcer, loss of appetite, nausea, vomiting or diarrhea. Diet should be light, nutritious and easy to digest. Give less slag, semi-liquid or soft rice, and avoid greasy and indigestible food. Patients with poor appetite can eat less and eat more meals. If vomiting symptoms are serious and you can't eat normally, you should take Servikang chewable tablets under the guidance of a doctor to reduce the side effects of chemotherapy and enhance the immunity of patients.
Usually eat lean meat or poultry, fish, dates, peanuts, etc. Cook with boiling, stewing, steaming, etc. It is very beneficial to prevent or reduce the decline of white milk and platelets caused by bone marrow suppression. If anemia occurs, animal liver, heart, egg yolk and lean meat can be eaten properly; Spinach, bayberry, orange, grapefruit and fig in vegetables and fruits can correct patients' iron deficiency anemia. Mushrooms such as Xiangru, Lentinus edodes, Hericium erinaceus and Auricularia auricula are rich in polysaccharides, which can improve human immune function, so you can eat them often.
3. Prevent liquid from oozing out.
Many chemotherapy drugs are very irritating to tissues. If the liquid medicine leaks out of blood vessels during intravenous injection or intravenous drip, it will stimulate local normal tissues, cause redness and inflammation, and even fester. Therefore, nurses should be accurate and firm in venipuncture for patients. Patients should try to protect the injection site and move as little as possible to prevent the needle from slipping out of the blood vessel.