Chemotherapy sessions how long

Chemotherapy is a medication that works throughout the whole body to attack, and hopefully kill, cancer cells. There are hundreds of different kinds of chemotherapy medications and some are used individually while others may be combined for treatment.

Chemotherapy can be administered a number of ways but common ways include orally and intravenously. The chemotherapy itself stays in the body within 2 -3 days of treatment but there are short-term and long-term side effects that patients may experience. Not all patients will experience all side effects but many will experience at least a few.

Short term side effects may include hair loss, nausea, fatigue, fingernail and toenail weakness, pain, mouth or throat soreness, loss of menstrual periods, weight gain, insomnia, constipation, diarrhea, anemia, changes in white blood cell count and more. The good news is that many of these symptoms are short-term and will go away once chemotherapy treatment is discontinued.

Usually, a cycle is defined in monthly intervals. For example, two bi-weekly chemotherapy sessions may be classified as one cycle. In most cases, the number of cycles - or the length of chemotherapy from start to finish - has been determined by research and clinical trials.

For information about the 4th Angel Mentoring Program visit www. Toggle navigation. Spanish About Chemocare. You have a course of treatment which includes a number of chemotherapy cycles. Your doctor may also refer to your treatment plan as your chemotherapy regimen. A course of chemotherapy usually takes between 3 to 6 months, although it can be more or less than that.

The treatment will include one or more chemotherapy drugs. You may have the chemotherapy into a vein intravenous drugs , or as tablets or capsules. During a course of treatment, you usually have around 4 to 8 cycles of treatment. A cycle is the time between one round of treatment until the start of the next. After each round of treatment you have a break, to allow your body to recover. So if your cycle lasts 4 weeks, you may have treatment on the 1st, 2nd and 3rd days and then nothing from the 4th to the 28th day.

Then the cycle starts again. Or, as another example, you may have a 3 week cycle where you have treatment on the 1st and 8th days, but nothing on days 2 to 7 and days 9 to Treatment plans are based on years of research. Your doctor will suggest the best combination of drugs based on the results of these trials. The drugs aim to kill the cancer cells while causing as little harm as possible to normal, healthy cells.

At any one time, some of the cancer cells will be resting. Chemotherapy only attacks cells that are in the process of splitting into two dividing. So resting cells will not be killed. Some of the cancer cells that were resting during your first treatment will be dividing by the time your second treatment comes around.

So they should be killed off.