Treating stomach cancer isn’t something to make a rash decision about. Depending on where the cancer is located, what kind of cancer is present, the stage it is at, and several other factors (including your overall health), there may be a variety of treatment options for you to pick from. Treatment can be stressful, expensive, and may go on for some time; it’s important to know you made the best choice you could for yourself and your family. Here’s a look at some of the options for stomach cancer treatments.
Considering Your Options
While research for new cancer treatments is always going on, the most popular routes at present are surgery, radiation, chemotherapy, or targeted drug therapy. In addition to these, most cancer centers also rely strongly on palliative care. Palliative care is a means of making the patient as comfortable as possible during the extensive process of treating stomach cancer.
This might include managing pain or finding ways to help keep meals down. Treatments like radiation and chemotherapy can come with some nasty side effects that can be miserable, especially when the patient is already facing the symptoms of cancer. The extra support provided by your medical team can make all the difference.
Surgery
Patients with cancer that remains in the stomach and in the stomach only may benefit from surgery. Stomach cancer surgery can involve removing the tumor or cancerous tissue, along with a small amount of the surrounding tissue. Or, it may involve removing a part of the stomach, the whole stomach, or nearby lymph nodes. Additionally, surgery can be utilized to remove parts of the stomach that have begun causing considerable discomfort; in this case, it may not be a means to a “cure”, but it can be a way to increase quality of life.
Chemical Options
As with most cancers, once the disease becomes too large to remove surgically, doctors may suggest you turn to radiation therapy, chemotherapy, or targeted drug therapy. Any of these options can be used in conjunction with each other or surgery as a more effective means of treatment to shrink the cancer down and making surgery an option, or to ensure any cancerous cells that escaped during surgery are dealt with.
Radiation and Chemotherapy
Radiation therapy involves the use of a machine that sends bouts of high energy beams at the tumor or cancerous cells, killing them. If a tumor becomes extremely large before treatment begins, radiation can be a way to make it smaller and relieve some symptoms.
Chemotherapy involves ingesting a specific chemical to either kill the cancer. It is a more appropriate option for later stages of cancer, because it is effective throughout the entire body, rather than just the spot it’s directed to, the way surgery or radiation might be. Both of these methods can come with some rather debilitating side effects, and some patients choose instead to manage the symptoms that come with the cancer, rather than dealing with both -- particularly when guarantees are minimal.
Targeted Drugs
Cancer develops when a mutation in the DNA of cells causes them to grow faster, and reproduce more often, and live longer than normal cells, leading to the cluster of cancer. Targeted drug therapy involves taking a specific drug that targets the abnormality present in the cancerous cells. While there are several different types of targeted drugs, the Mayo Clinic reports that only “ramucirumab and trastuzumab” are currently approved for the treatment of gastroesophageal junction cancer. Chemotherapy will likely be recommended in tandem with targeted drug therapy.
