General Concepts of Chemotherapy and Radiotherapy

Chemotherapy can be used in most of the cancers that affect women’s gynecological organs, although chemotherapy is most commonly used for women who have ovarian cancer. There are lots of misconceptions that people have about chemotherapy. First, and most important, is that I often hear people say that it probably does not work. This is simply just not true. The difficulty with chemotherapy is in some ways having a picture in one’s mind’s eye of what a cancer is like and then imagining a drug being poured in (usually in a drip and into a vein), so how can this possibly get rid of the cancer? As a surgeon I wholeheartedly and rightly believe in the type of treatment that I offer. It is also true that it is easier, I think, for the patient to visualize a cancer being cut out and therefore it is removed, whereas it is difficult to see how a drug can do anything other than perhaps just shrink things down. I can quite honestly personally testify to having looked inside lots of people’s tummies before and after chemotherapy and the difference is truly staggering. Lots and lots of tumors just literally disappear into thin air after chemotherapy.