DorlandHealth

Cancer is such a tough disease that the strength of the drugs needed to treat it can result in serious side effects. Chemotherapy (or “chemo,” as it is often called) is a method of cancer treatment that uses very strong drugs to eradicate, or kill, cancer cells. Chemo can be taken or administered in a variety of ways — through an injection into the muscle or an IV into the bloodstream, through a cream applied to the skin or through a pill, capsule or liquid that the patient swallows.

There are two main reasons why patients taking chemo suffer from side effects. The first reason is that chemo drugs are extremely strong. The second is that, though they are meant to kill cancer cells alone, chemo drugs travel throughout the body and affect healthy cells as well.

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