against smaller tumors, so chemotherapy is sometimes used to shrink the tumors before radiotherapy .
A number of procedures (clinical protocols) use both methods—together or in sequence—to take advantage
of the increased sensitivity a tumor may have when both treatments are used. The combined therapy does not
usually produce more toxic effects, side effects or complications than each treatment produces on its own. But
the dosages of both may sometimes have to be reduced to prevent really major side effects.
• The new biological therapies—interferon alpha, beta and gamma, interleukin and other investigational programs
—are being blended with standard radiotherapy and chemotherapy. But research on these combinations is still
in a fairly early stage. We are still in the process of testing this form of therapy to discover what sequence,
dosage or combination is the most helpful or even whether adding biological therapies to the others is more
effective than today's standard treatments.
Adjuvant Chemotherapy The purpose of giving chemotherapy after surgery— called adjuvant therapy—is to wipe out tumor cells that may be invisible to the surgeon's eye but that might cause a recurrence later on. There has been a great deal of interest in using chemotherapy after surgery because studies of experimental tumors in animals have shown that chemotherapy can cure very small tumors. In fact, chemotherapy is most effective when tumors are so small that they are invisible. Adjuvant radiation therapy is also given after surgery to kill remaining cancer cells.
