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Kelsey Iseminger

Professor Leonard

Enlish 1201- Online

1 November 2019

Is Chemotherapy the Most Effective Way to Treat Cancer?

Have any of your friends or family ever been diagnosed with cancer? It is the diagnosis

that everyone dreads to hear. If so, you are not alone. The truth is, around 38% of people will be

diagnosed with cancer at some point in their lifetimes (National). Over the summer (July 2019),

my boyfriend of almost two years was given the apprehended diagnosis. Cameron was diagnosed

with bone cancer in his left shoulder. At first, we weren’t sure if the cancer was fatal or treatable,

because all cancers pathways are different. The good news is, Cameron’s tumor had localized in

his shoulder, which means it had not spread to other parts of his body. Furthermore, even though

he would have to wait a year to attend college, Cameron was projected to be done with his

treatments by April of 2020 and is expected to recover just fine.

Although Cameron’s story has a good outlook, it is not that way for every cancer patient.

Some of them may be given a couple months to live, and sadly, some patients are given even

less. Most people assume that chemotherapy is the best way to treat all forms of cancer, but what

do people actually know about it? Does chemotherapy work on all people the same? This essay

will explain and defend why chemotherapy alone may not be the best way to treat cancer, and

will look at how adding other kinds of medicine to it make it more effective. This essay will also

outline what chemotherapy is, why adding other medicines to it makes it more helpful, and

explain the possible side effects of it.

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First and foremost, chemotherapy is the most common drug used to treat cancer. It

targets any cells that rapidly divide, which include cancer cells. Unfortunately, rapidly dividing

cells include hair cells, which is why cancer patients lose their hair. It is not the cancer itself that

causes it, but rather, a medicine used to treat it.

While there are a lot of variables to consider when it comes to cancer treatment, such as

how long the treatment process should be, how many different drugs should be given at one time,

or when and how long treatment is administered, it is important to realize that chemotherapy is

an essential tool in helping patients on the road to recovery. One variation of chemotherapy

suggests that postoperative chemotherapy treatment is just as important as pre-operative

treatment.

A study written by Jennifer L. Lund et al. is titled “Comparative Effectiveness of

Postoperative Chemotherapy Among Older Patients with Non-Metastatic Rectal Cancer Treated

with Preoperative Chemoradiotherapy,” and tests the effectiveness of chemotherapy after

surgery. This experiment looked at a sample of 1,316 cancer patients and how they responded to

postoperative chemotherapy. About half of the group’s treatment contained oxaliplatin, which is

a drug that can be used in chemotherapy to slow or terminate cancer cell growth. The results of

the study found that patients who received postoperative chemo were associated with reduced

mortality rates, specifically those 75 years or younger. However, the addition of oxaliplatin to

treatments did not affect mortality rates.

The purpose of this article was to publish the results of an experiment that tested a

variation of chemotherapy. This article would be useful to researchers in the cancer fields, and

they may want to use this study as a template for one of their own. The writers of this piece are

Jennifer L. Lund, Til Sturmer, and Hannah K. Sanoff. These authors are credible because the
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website gives direct links to their impressive bios, detailing where they attended school and

where they work now. To list just one, Jennifer Lund works and is a corresponding author for

the Department of Epidemiology at Gillings School of Global Public Health. This article is

credible because it was published on a website called ScienceDirect, which is exclusively for

scholarly journals, books, and in-depth studies like this one.

This study shows that postoperative chemotherapy is an essential step in a patient’s

recovery. Without it, patients would have higher mortality rates and live for less time after

treatment. Studies like these help patients and families understand that even after the removal of

a cancerous tumor, the battle is not over. Although the relief of getting the tumor out of the

patient is great, the treatment as a whole will be much more effective after the entire

chemotherapy process is complete.

Figure 1: Girl in Hospital Bed

Taken from www.theguardian.com

This picture depicts a girl going through chemotherapy. It tries to highlight the

misconception surrounding chemotherapy; that all patients end up looking and feeling like this

girl. While this is a possibility, it does not overshadow the fact that chemotherapy is the most
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effective drug currently available for fighting cancer cells. The claim of this picture is that

chemotherapy does not help cancer patients as much as people may think it does. This is evident

from looking at the melancholy expression of the girl and the dark lighting. This image uses

pathos to make the audience feel sorry for the girl. This furthers the photographer's purpose

because the girl is getting chemotherapy, which makes her upset (in addition to having cancer),

which in turn saddens the audience. This picture also features ethos; the tone being muted and

somber. The use of this style in the picture makes the audience look at hospitals, cancer, and

chemotherapy from a negative standpoint (“Don’t Tell Cancer Patients….).

It is important to realize that even though cancer patients being treated with

chemotherapy can suffer through some unpleasant side effects like this little girl, without this

kind of medicine cancer would be a lot harder to get rid of.

Speaking of side effects, chemotherapy may cause a wide range of them. Some possible

side effects include fertility issues, nausea and vomiting, hair loss (alopecia), appetite loss, and

sleep problems. There are many others, but those are among the most common. The National

Cancer Institute summarizes chemotherapy’s effects on different patients like this: “Keep in

mind that side effects vary from person to person, even among those receiving the same

treatment.” In short, no one’s cancer journey is the same. These side effects may or may not

occur, but if they do, it is important to keep in mind that they are a necessary evil. The number

and intensity of side effects may depend on the patient’s age, gender, weight, and type of cancer.

Now that we understand that chemotherapy is one of the most effective drugs against

cancer, it is time to ask the question, “Could another kind of medicine be even more effective

than chemotherapy?” According to this study, it seems like there may be.
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An article written by David I. Marks and others is titled “Burden of Hospitalization in

Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia Patients Treated with Inotuzumab Ozogamicin Versus Standard

Chemotherapy Treatment,” appears in The US National Library of Medicine, and takes a

comparative look at hospitalization between patients receiving standard chemotherapy treatment

(SoC) and those receiving Inotuzumab Ozogamicin (INO). The article outlines an experiment

that was conducted on leukemia patients, as well as giving the technical results and drawing

conclusions. The consensus of the experiment was that those who were administered Inotuzumab

Ozogamicin were hospitalized less, coming in at 7.6 days in the hospital per month as opposed to

the 18.4 days for the standard treatment. Using INO would be less burdensome on hospitals and

their staff, as well as being less expensive for the health care community in general.

This article was written to demonstrate that INO treatment, although not as popular as the

regular SoC treatment, would result with the patient spending fewer days in the hospital. This

was most likely written for scientists in the medical community, and may provide them insights

into alternate ways to treat cancer patients. For this reason, the article provides a lot of technical

results that may be confusing to someone unfamiliar with the medical terminology. The authors

are credible because the website provides you with where they work, and they all work in the

medical field. For example, one author, David Marks, is said to work for the Bristol Haemtology

and Oncology Centere at the University Hospitals Bristol NHS Foundation in Bristol, UK. The

source is accurate and up to date because it was published recently (August 22, 2019). In

addition to having qualified authors and being kept up to date, the website it is found on is

strictly for medical studies like this one.

Studies like this are important to look and and possibly try to replicate because they may

be a stepping stone on the road to finding a more effective way to cure cancer. This study
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specifically looks at days spent in the hospital, and found that the INO treatment results with

fewer days in the hospital. Whether this drug leads to longer life expectancies than chemotherapy

is unclear since it is not what the study specifically is looking at, but experiments like these may

be on the right track.

Another thing to consider in the field of chemotherapy is the idea that certain medicines

can be added to the standard chemotherapy treatment to make it more effective. What kind of

drugs are these and how much more effective are they than chemotherapy alone?

An article titled “Chemotherapy and Targeted Therapy in the Management of Cervical

Cancer,” is written by Lalit Kumar, et al., and appears on the Science Direct website, which

features medical journals and articles like this one. This article discusses the challenge of treating

cervical cancer, with 30 to 40 percent of patients failing to “achieve the complete response”

when being treated with chemo-radiation (which is the standard treatment for cervical cancer).

This article proposes that patients will have more successful results when bevacizumab is added

to the typical chemotherapy treatment. Bevacizumab is designed to block a protein called

vascular endothelial growth factor, and hinder the growth of it in the body. The author says that a

higher survival rate is seen in patients treated with bevacizumab along with chemotherapy.

The author’s purpose in writing this article is directed at doctors who treat cancer in

countries with limited resources,” specifically North and South America, the Carribbean, and

South Asia. Cervical cancer is very common in these areas, and the author is trying to provide

those who treat them with a more effective medicinal combination. One of the authors (Lalit

Kumar, MD) is certainly reliable because he works for the Department of Medical Oncology at

the Institute Rotary Cancer Hospital in New Delhi, India. The website that is article is on is

reliable because it is specifically for medical journals and articles like this one.
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With the idea that chemotherapy can be improved in mind, it is wonderful to consider

how much more effective chemotherapy could possibly be in the future. What other kinds of

cancer could be helped by this, and what other medicines are there to consider? These are the

questions that the medical community is trying to find answers to, and this article has just

discovered one.

Another study that shows the results of specialized chemotherapy is an article written by

Keriran Logan et al. titled “Targeted Chemo-Sonodynamic Therapy Treatment of Breast

Tumours Using Ultrasound Responsive Microbubbles Loaded with Paclitaxel, Doxorubicin and

Rose Bengal,” appears on the ScienceDirect website. This article is about how a specialized form

of chemotherapy and an alternate kind of surgery would reduce harmful side effects to patients

with breast cancer, as well as be more effective in ridding them of the tumor. This article

proposes breast conservation surgery (BCS) as an alternative to mastectomy, which is associated

with physical and psychological issues for patients. To perform BCS on patients, the tumor has

to be a certain size, and the author evaluates a specialized form of chemotherapy that would be

very effective when paired with BCS. This form of chemo is called ultrasound targeted

microbubble destruction (UTMD), and, when used, has been reported to be a more effective way

to treat breast cancer.

The author’s purpose in this article is to try and persuade those in the medical community

to consider a more specialized way to treat breast cancer. The authors are reliable because the

website proudly shows the readers an impressive bio for each of them. For example, one author,

Keriran Logan, works at the Biomedical Sciences Research Institute in Coleraine, Northern

Ireland, UK. This article was published in a reliable medical journal called “European Journal of

Pharmaceutics and Biopharmaceutics,” in addition to being on a scholarly website.

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It is important to consider the idea that all forms of cancers respond to chemotherapy

differently, in addition to slightly different results for each patient. Applying this concept of

specialization to chemotherapy could make a lot of treatments more effective. Not all forms of

cancer are the same, and not all forms of chemotherapy should be the same.

In addition to taking into account how much chemotherapy is given, what drugs may be

added to it to make it more effective, and how much of the side effects someone can handle, it is

also important to look at the timing of the treatment plan. A treatment plan is a schedule of

chemotherapy sessions administered by the doctor to the cancer patient. It provides an intentional

schedule of treatments that the medical staff believes will help the patient the most.

It provides when the patient is supposed to come in and how long they will have to stay

(overnight or outpatients). This next study shows clear, positive results when a patient’s

treatment plan is completed on time.

This article, written by Kristen D. Starbuck, et al., is titled “Prognostic Impact of

Adjuvant Chemotherapy Treatment Intensity for Ovarian Cancer,” appears in the US National

Library of Medicine, and evaluates the survival rates of patients who complete their treatment

plans on time as opposed to those who have delays. Patients who completed their treatment on

time, or who had a delay of less than a month, had a median survival length of 41.3 months.

Those who experienced a delay of over a month only had a median survival length of 18.1

months. Patients who had a delay of less than four weeks were reported to have a median

survival length of 35.0 months. The conclusion of the article states that completing

chemotherapy on time led to an increase of survival lengths, whereas delayed treatments led to

decreased survival lengths.

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The purpose of writing this article was to prove that on-time completion of chemotherapy

treatment leads to more positive results for the patient. This article was written for doctors and

cancer patients to show them how important a reliable treatment plan is. Because this article is

viewed by the medical community, it contains a lot of unfamiliar abbreviations and percentages

of medicines. The authors of this article are reliable because they all work in some kind of cancer

research. For example, one author, Kristen Starbuck, works for the Department of Gynecologic

Oncology at the Roswell Park Comprehensive Cancer Center in Buffalo, New York, USA. This

article is reliable because it appears in a government-run library; the US National Library of

Medicine.

Based on the results of this article, patients who complete their treatments on time have a

much longer survival rate than those who do not. Who knew that the timing of treatment is just

as important as getting treatment. This article is an important one to read for anyone with cancer,

to show them how important completing their treatments on time.

In addition to considering the different types of chemotherapy, it is also important to keep

researching things that could help block the harmful side effects of chemotherapy. The device

described in this next article, when it is ready to use, could be one of the most helpful

developments for cancer patients.

The article, written by Ruth Williams, appears in an online magazine called The Scientist,

and is titled “Mopping Up Excess Chemotherapy Drugs.” Chemotherapy is essentially poison to

the body; it kills tumor cells, but also ends up killing healthy tissue such as hair and teeth cells.

This article brings to light a device that filters the chemotherapy drugs out of the blood stream

once they have gone through the necessary organ(s). This prototype device would be very

helpful at keeping the body healthy during chemotherapy treatment. However, this device needs
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much more research and development before it will become a serious option for patients. In

addition, the usage of this device would require the patient to be monitored in an intensive care

unit. Although the idea of this device is not quite perfect, it is a step in the right direction.

This article is written for anyone in the cancer research fields to get them to consider a

new way to help make the treatment process easier. It is also written for anyone interested in

cancer research developments to let them know about a new device that may be used in the

future. The author, Ruth Williams, specializes in writing articles for medical journals, has a PhD

in genetics from King’s College London, and was a postdoctoral researcher in stem cell biology.

The website is reliable because it features a lot of articles aimed at introducing and exploring

new ideas in the science world.

Devices and ideas like this one could be valuable tools in the future of chemotherapy

treatment. Although this device is not ready for use and needs more development, when it is

ready to be implemented, the world could be in a new age where cancer patients get to keep their

hair!

Chemotherapy is a valuable tool that we are fortunate to have access to. However, it is

important to understand that it can be much more effective if it is altered specifically for each

type of cancer. Specialized chemotherapy is an important step on the way to finding a cure for

cancer.
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Works Cited:

“Don’t Tell Cancer Patients What They Could Be Doing to Cure Themselves”. The

Guardian, 26 March 2016.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/mar/26/do-not-tell-cancer-patients-

cures-they-could-be-doing. Accessed on 9 Nov. 2019.

Kumar, Lalit, et al., “Chemotherapy and Targeted Therapy in the Management of

Cervical Cancer.” Current Problems in Cancer, vol. 42, no. 2, Mar. 2018, pp. 120–128.

EBSCOhost, doi:10.1016/j.currproblcancer.2018.01.016. https://www-sciencedirect-

com.sinclair.ohionet.org/science/article/pii/S0147027218300199 Accessed on 27 Oct.

2019.

Logan, Keiran, et al., “Targeted Chemo-Sonodynamic Therapy Treatment of Breast

Tumours Using Ultrasound Responsive Microbubbles Loaded with Paclitaxel,

Doxorubicin and Rose Bengal.” European Journal of Pharmaceutics and

Biopharmaceutics, vol. 139, June 2019, pp. 224–231. EBSCOhost,

doi:10.1016/j.ejpb.2019.04.003. https://www-sciencedirect-

com.sinclair.ohionet.org/science/article/pii/S0939641119300840?via%3Dihub. Accessed

on 27 Oct. 2019.

Lund, Jennifer L., et al., “Comparative Effectiveness of Postoperative Chemotherapy

among Older Patients with Non-Metastatic Rectal Cancer Treated with Preoperative

Chemoradiotherapy.” Journal of Geriatric Oncology, vol. 7, no. 3, May 2016, pp. 176–

186. EBSCOhost, doi:10.1016/j.jgo.2016.01.011.

https://eds-a-ebscohost-com.sinclair.ohionet.org/eds/detail/detail?vid=2&sid=7e167b32-

4cbf-4eaf-ad44-653d39a417df%40sdc-v-
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sessmgr02&bdata=JnNpdGU9ZWRzLWxpdmU%3d#AN=S1879406816000345

&db=edsel. Accessed on 15 Oct. 2019.

Marks, David I., et al., “Burden of Hospitalization in Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia

Patients Treated with Inotuzumab Ozogamicin versus Standard Chemotherapy

Treatment.” Cancer Medicine, no. 13, 2019, p. 5959.

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/cam4.2480. Accessed on 20 Oct. 2019.

National Cancer Institute . “Cancer Statistics.” The National Cancer Institute, Apr. 2018.

www.cancer.gov/about-cancer/understanding/statistics . Accessed on 3 Nov. 2019.

Starbuck, Kristen D., et al. “Prognostic Impact of Adjuvant Chemotherapy Treatment

Intensity for Ovarian Cancer.” PLoS ONE, vol. 13, no. 11, Nov. 2018, pp. 1–12.

EBSCOhost, https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/30418985. Accessed on 20 Oct.

2019.

Williams, Ruth. “Mopping Up Excess Chemotherapy Drugs.” The Scientist, 1 April 2019,

https://www.the-scientist.com/modus-operandi/mopping-up-excess-chemotherapy-drugs.

Accessed on 19 October 2019.