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The royal treatment: Understanding preventative chemotherapy

For many of us, the term preventative chemotherapy is confusing. Chemotherapy is a treatment for a disease, not medication to prevent cancer, right? And if surgery removed all traces of the cancer, why would a patient need to go through chemotherapy? Preventative chemotherapy doesn’t prevent you from getting cancer. In medical terms, preventative chemotherapy is more accurately called adjuvant chemotherapy. Adjuvant chemotherapy is used to kill any remaining microscopic cancer cells that may remain after surgery, and to eliminate any cancerous cells that might have spread to other parts of the body. Adjuvant chemotherapy is used when all visible traces of cancer were removed during surgery. It’s…

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 Preventative Chemotherapy? Not Quite, but Studies Are Underway in Immunoprevention

When Catherine, Princess of Wales, told the world Friday she was undergoing “preventative chemotherapy” after surgery revealed she had cancer, experts explained the term was not quite precise. Most likely, they said, the future queen is receiving adjuvant chemotherapy; this is given after primary treatment to kill off any remaining cancer cells, thus staving off a recurrence.

 The Misconception of "Preventative" Chemotherapy

It all comes down to the risk of cancer recurrence, right? So if there was a big cancer, an aggressive cancer, let's say, for example, the cancer was in lymph nodes, there's a higher chance that that cancer will come back, right? And so we refer to doing any additional therapy at that point adjuvant therapy, so after surgery. And that can include chemotherapy, and that can include radiation therapy for example. And so I think in the case that's been in the news, there was a high-risk cancer that was removed, and they're doing chemotherapy in an adjuvant setting, so giving the patient chemotherapy in case there's any microscopic disease left behind. It must have been a high-risk case.

Articles of Interest

Editorial: Risks and Benefits of Adjuvants to Cancer Therapies

Cancer patients may have minimal residual disease after completing primary treatment, which could be a source of subsequent early recurrence and metastasis. Adjuvant therapy (including chemotherapy, radiation therapy, hormone therapy, targeted therapy, and immunotherapy) has the potential to remove minimal residual disease and increase patient survival.

Kate Middleton is having ‘preventive chemotherapy’ for cancer. What does this mean?

The effectiveness of preventive therapy depends on the type of cancer and the type of chemotherapy. Let’s consider the common example of bowel cancer, which is at high risk of returning after surgery because of its size or spread to local lymph glands. The first chemotherapy tested improved survival by 15%. With more intense chemotherapy, the chance of surviving six years is approaching 80%. Preventive chemotherapy is usually given for three to six months.

Neoadjuvant and adjuvant therapy: What’s the difference?

The goal of adjuvant chemotherapy is to kill off any lingering cancer cells distant from the primary tumor to reduce the risk the cancer will come back. Sometimes cancer cells in the bloodstream or lymph nodes are missed by imaging tests, but if they aren’t treated, they may travel to a distant organ and form a new tumor.

Princess Kate received 'preventative chemotherapy'—here's what that means

After Kate Middleton shocked the world with her cancer diagnosis, experts explain what the rest of us can learn from her experience.

Talking Chemo – Understanding the Role of Preventative Chemo

So in a sense, it’s called preventive. That’s not the term that we usually use for it, but it is true that we call that kind of therapy curative intent therapy. It oftentimes does include chemotherapy along with many of the other things we just talked about. And as the counter distinction to that is metastatic cancer into the spread throughout the body where we don’t realistically have a chance of curing it. So instead we’re trying to manage the cancer, rather than cure it. And so I think what they were referring to in those press releases was the use of chemotherapy to help augment the cure rate of whatever cancer she has, which I don’t think anybody quite knows yet.

The Cancer Miracle Isn’t a Cure. It’s Prevention.

We cannot treat our way out of the rising cancer caseload. The only solution is a full-scale defense, so that nobody suffers the disease in the first place.

What Is Preventative Chemotherapy, the Treatment Kate Middleton Is Currently Undergoing?

“Preventive chemo is sometimes used after the primary cancer is removed to try to lower the risk of it coming back,” says Marleen Meyers, medical oncologist and director of the cancer-survivorship program at NYU Langone Perlmutter Cancer Center. “We often give it for several kinds of cancer to try to eradicate microscopic cells that cannot be seen on scans but can grow if left untreated. Even if cancer is resected for curative intent, there may be a high risk of recurrence, so chemotherapy may be used. This may be done in breast, ovarian, and colon cancer, among others.”

What is preventive chemotherapy and how effective is it? The Princess of Wales’ treatment explained

The treatment, known formally as adjuvant chemotherapy, is a course of anti-cancer drugs that is given to mop up any cancer cells that might remain in the body after primary cancer treatment, which is usually surgical removal of a tumour.

Why So Many of Us Quit Taking Tamoxifen

Based on my doctor’s advice, I filled my prescription and started taking tamoxifen in July 2009. The hot flashes began after just two days. I started to have difficulty concentrating and I couldn’t focus at work. A couple of weeks later, I experienced ongoing pain in my pelvic area. After trying tamoxifen for about a month, I quit–I had to be able to get through the day.