Current cancer treatments-"cut, burn, and poison"-are recognized as crude and painful. Promising new methods focus on delivering anticancer drugs precisely to the cancer and on increasing the immune system's ability to fend off cancer. There are lists of drugs for breast cancer, each drug with its own pros and cons. Anticancer drugs have unpleasant side effects because most target all rapidly dividing cells, including normal ones.
The side effects include nausea, vomiting, and loss of hair. X rays also have side effects because, in passing through the body, they kill healthy cells that lie in the path of the cancer cells. Fortunately, there are now numerous lists of drugs for breast cancer. Each of which is tailored according to the patients' severity. The kind of drug a patient would take differs from other breast cancer patients because every person is different.
There are different kinds of ways to take a drug, whether it be intravenously (IV), orally, subcutaneously, injection, and intramuscularly.
Lists of drugs for breast cancer taken intravenously include the following: Abraxane IV, Adriamycin IV, Aredia IV, Epirubicin IV, Gemzar IV, Herceptin IV, Taxol IV, Taxotere IV, and Vinorelbine IV.
Abraxane (paclitaxel), Epirubicin, Gemzar, Taxol, Taxotere and Vinorelbine are drugs for patients on advance stages. The action is to slow or stop cancer cell growth.
Adriamycin (doxorubicin) used to treat breast cancer and other types of cancer. The action of this drug is first to disrupt and it would then destroy the growth of cancer cells. Aredia (pamidronate disodium) reduces bone complications of patients with breast cancer that has already spread.
Tamoxifen, a drug originally used as an anti-estrogen is now used as a preventive drug for some women in high risks for breast cancer and also taken as a treatment for such cancer in women.
Raloxifene is a drug that used to treat osteoporosis in women. Now, it is used as a treatment of breast cancer. This drug binds with the estrogen receptors and thus it produces some of estrogens beneficial effects without producing the adverse ones.
Fortunately, there are numerous lists of drugs for breast cancer patients that health service providers would know. Because of this list, they would have options for every breast cancer patient.
Charlene J. Nuble is a healthcare professional who loves writing about women's issues, parenting and other health related stuffs. Click on the link to learn more about Lists of Drugs for Breast Cancer.
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