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New Cancer Treatments That Could Revolutionize Medicine

When many people think about cancer treatments, they assume that the treatment protocols and options have not changed much in recent years. However, even though it may seem like the basic options in cancer treatment are the same, every day there are new discoveries made in the ways in which doctors can attack cancer and save lives. Get to know more about some of the new cancer treatments coming available that could revolutionize medicine and the ways that cancer is dealt with in the future. 

HIPEC Treatments

One of the newest revolutions in cancer treatment is known as HIPEC treatment. HIPEC stands for hyperthermic intraperitoneal chemotherapy and it is an infusion treatment that is performed on people with cancer in the abdominal region of the body. 

When a person has abdominal cancer of any kind, one of the primary treatment options is surgery. Surgery may be performed to remove all or part of an affected organ or may simply be performed to remove the tumors in the abdominal cavity. Now, doctors can perform surgery on patients with abdominal cancer while also providing them with intense chemotherapy treatments. 

HIPEC treatments are administered during surgery. The chemotherapy drugs are heated and then circulated throughout the abdominal cavity for an hour or more following the removal of the visible tumors during surgery. The idea is that heating the solution can help it absorb into the body better and doing so in conjunction with surgery can improve outcomes and reduce the recurrence of cancer in the area. 

Dendritic Cell Vaccines

One of the areas of most interest in cancer treatment development today is immunotherapy. Immunotherapy treatments are those that are designed to enhance the body's natural immune system response to cancer cells. In essence, immunotherapies work as a booster to kick the immune system into gear in the fight against cancer. 

Researchers have recently developed dendritic cell vaccines as a form of immunotherapy. Dendritic cells occur naturally in the body as a part of the immune system and are designed to trap foreign bodies to be destroyed by T-cells. However, because cancer cells grow from within the body, dendritic cells may not naturally be inclined to seek them out for trapping and destruction. 

The dendritic cell vaccine, therefore, involves doctors removing dendritic cells from the body and are trained to detect and seek out tumor cells using tumor cell antigens. The dendritic cells are then injected back into the body so they can begin their work. While this treatment is still being perfected, it can be an effective form of immunotherapy and can help to get the immune system more involved in the fight against cancer cells in the body. 

Knowing more about these new cancer treatments that could revolutionize medicine, you can be sure that if you are diagnosed with cancer, you are getting the best and most cutting edge treatments possible. 

If you have other complicating factors like arthritis, contact a business such as Idaho Arthritis Center.


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