What Causes the Aftereffects of Chemotherapy?
Many of the symptoms or problems you may experience in the first one to two years after completion of chemotherapy are directly due to your chemotherapy. For instance, strong drugs designed to control cancer cells, i.e., chemotherapy, can cause various changes in your blood, such as anemia, which makes you weak and tired, or low white blood cell counts, which put you at increased risk for certain infections. Some chemotherapy treatments can affect hormone-producing organs such as the ovaries and testicles. Hormone changes can produce a variety of different side effects, including changes in your emotions and sense of v being. Some chemotherapy can cause temporary or permanent damage to other organs, such as liver inflammation or weakened kidneys. This damage can affect your stamina or appetite, уour capacity to handle medications, and your risk of certain infection.
Other symptoms and problems following chemotherapy related only indirectly to the treatments. For example, chemotherapy-induced changes in taste sensation may cause you to eat less. This, in turn, can result in vitamin deficiencies and malnutrition. Fatigue, a common aftereffect of chemotherapy, can be due in p to the cumulative effects of the demands of healing (all the places that had cancer are now healing and either returning to their pre-cancerous state or developing a cancer-free scar).
Some of your symptoms are caused, or worsened, by the experience of having had cancer and chemotherapy, and are not really due to the chemotherapy itself. For example, the emotional stress and change in your sleep patterns can cause fatigue and irritability.
How Does Chemotherapy Cause Late Effects (Changes Seen Mont to Years after Completion of Chemotherapy)?
Chemotherapy causes many changes in your body. Some of them are detectable during the months when you are receiving your
chemotherapy. Others are first detectable weeks, months, or even years after you received your last dose of chemotherapy. Norm age-related changes, infections, or the development of other med cal problems, such as diabetes, may make a chemotherapy-related change more obvious. For example, if you suffer subtle hearing loss as a result of your chemotherapy, you may not notice it until years later, when the effect of age-related hearing loss is added on.
Changes caused by chemotherapy that can result in aftereffects include
•changes in the reproductive organs (e.g., ovaries, testicles); for example, causing sterility and menopause •changes in other hormone-secreting organs (e.g., adrenal glands)
•changes in the heart muscle; for example, caused by high-dose Adriamycin
•scarring of the lung; for example, caused by bleomycin, mitomycin-C, BCNU (Carmustine), or cyclophosphamide
•injury to kidneys; for example, caused by cisplatin
•injury to nerves; for example, caused by vincristine or cisplatin
•changes in the brain; for example, caused by methotrexate, when given into the spinal fluid
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Tags: Cancer
Tags: Cancer