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What
is the standard treatment for small cell lung cancer?
In
patients with small cell lung cancer, combination chemotherapy
produces results that are superior to single-agent treatment.
Standard treatment options include:
· Combination
chemotherapy containing two or more drugs with or without radiation.
· Surgery is
part of the treatment plan for a small number of patients.
What
is high dose chemotherapy?
Certain
cancers are not cured by conventional doses of chemotherapy.
Some studies have shown that the response rate of certain cancer
cells to chemotherapy is related to the dose of chemotherapy
used to treat the cancer. One of the major limiting factors
of the dose of chemotherapy used for the treatment of small
cell lung cancer is bone marrow suppression (damage to the bone
marrow which produces red blood cells, white blood cells to
fight infection, and platelets to help control bleeding).
The cells in
the bone marrow that can go on to develop into all the blood cells
you need are called stem cells. With the help of stem cell
reinfusion and hematopoietic growth factors (drugs used to stimulate
the production of blood cells), it is possible to get a significant
dose increase for certain chemotherapeutic drugs. A number of
factors may have made high-dose chemotherapy less dangerous. One
of these is the addition of peripheral stem cell harvest obtained
after mobilization with chemotherapy followed by a hematopoietic
growth factor, which seems to result in a faster recovery of neutrophils
(the white blood cells that fight infection) and platelets compared
to bone marrow reinfusion alone.
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