Quote:
Originally posted by goBigtime
What does radiation therapy to do DNA?
What does chemotherapy do to DNA?
What are the two most commonly used advanced therapies for treating advanced cancer?
Why?.... no really, why?
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basically the aim of radiotherapy is to damage the DNA of the cell (both directly or indirectly) so much that it becomes useless.
The same goes for chemotherapy. There are different forms, some of which prevent replication of the DNA (which is one of the vital processes in division of the cell), for example by incorporating the drug in the DNA at places where something different should be, or by preventing the strands (DNA is a double-stranded helix-like molecule) to divide.
Maybe you should check out some sites to get more detailed information on this subject.
Therapy of advanced cancer of course depends on what kind of cancer it is, to what extend the 'sick' tissue has invaded healthy surrounding tissue, if there are any distant metastases, and if so, in what tissue these metastases have took place. For example, if we're talking about a metastase in a vertebra that gives neurological symptoms, the prognosis for the patient is poor, but to give him a certain quality of life the vertebra may need to be fixed to prevent it from collapsing, thereby compressing nearby nerves.
I'm not sure what the most used methods of palliative (non-curative) treatment are, but I think radio/chemo. For certain cancers, hormone treatment can also significantly shrinken the tumor.
Btw: I'm not sure if 'metastase' is commonly used in everyday language, it means something like 'seeding'.