It is important that you and your caregivers are able to evaluate treatment options and to understand how cancer treatments are compared so that you can work with your healthcare team to make informed treatment choices. Understanding the goals of a specific therapy, as well as the risk and benefits it poses, will help you decide which treatment is most appropriate for your situation. Patients typically receive cancer treatment in order to cure the cancer, prolong the duration of their life or alleviate symptoms caused by the cancer and improve their quality of life. These potential benefits of treatment must be balanced against the risks of treatment. Some risks posed by various cancer treatments may include time away from family and friends, uncomfortable side effects of therapy and/or long-term complications or death.
The most common term used to describe the effectiveness of cancer treatment is remission. Remission means that the cancer has disappeared and can no longer be measured using existing technology. Oncologists use the terms partial and complete remission to describe partial or complete disappearance of cancer after treatment. A cancer cannot be cured if a remission is not obtained; however, a remission does not always ensure that a cancer is cured. The best ways to evaluate the benefits of treatment are to examine the duration of remission, survival, and disease-free survival (cure). Since it often takes many years to determine whether a new treatment is better than a previous treatment, remission rates may be useful for comparing therapies when patients have not been evaluated long enough to know whether the chance of cure or survival is improved.
Treatment of cancer is associated with risks. It is important that you evaluate the risks and benefits of treatment within the context of the overall goal of receiving cancer therapy.
Cancer treatment may be inconvenient, prolonged, or unavailable close to home. These are important considerations when evaluating treatment options, but not typically mentioned in medical journals reporting the results and benefits of new treatments.
Select your optimal treatment: Cancer treatment varies depending upon your type of cancer, stage of cancer, and overall condition. Additionally, treatment options may vary depending on whether or not the goal of treatment is to cure the cancer, keep the cancer from spreading, or to relieve the symptoms caused by cancer. You and your physician will consider all of these factors as you work on selecting your optimal treatment.
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