Everything You Need to Know About Bone Cancer: Overview, Causes, Types, Signs and Symptoms, Diagnosis, Stages, and Treatment

Treatment

Radiation therapy

Treating bone cancer can take several pathways depending on the stage and the patient’s health. They are basically:

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  • Surgical treatment: It is often the main treatment of bone cancer. In many cases, doctors take out the tumor and do a biopsy at the same time. When the disease is advanced, surgical treatment may require cutting off a limb. In any case, the goal is removing cancer cells and the apparently healthy tissue that is around.
  • Radiation therapy: This type of treatment uses external beam radiation to kill cancer. It may also damage nearby healthy tissues. This type of therapy is more useful in cancers that cannot be treated by surgery. It can also be recommended after surgery to make sure that there’s no trace of cancer cells left.
  • Chemotherapy: This therapy uses drugs in the bloodstream to kill cancer, wherever they are. However, these substances can also affect healthy tissues and have several side effects. This type can be used when the disease has spread to other tissues.
  • Targeted therapy: This type of treatment makes use of the genetic understanding of cancer to trigger cell destruction targeted in cancer cells only. There’s a lot of research going on to figure out metabolic pathways only found in cancer cells to exploit them and destroy cancer without affecting other tissues.