How cancer is treated

Your treatment will depend on the type of cancer you have, where it began, and whether it has spread to other parts of your body. It will also depend on such things as your general health and the type of treatment you choose.

Treatments for cancer include:

• surgery, which aims to remove the cancer cells from your body
• chemotherapy and radiotherapy, which aim to kill cancer cells in the body, or at least stop them from multiplying and spreading
• targeted therapy, a new form of treatment for some cancers, which attacks just cancer cells
• immunotherapy, which helps the body's immune system to fight cancer
• hormone therapy, which reduces cancer-growth-promoting hormones that cause some cancers to grow.

People often have more than one of these treatments.

Many cancers can be cured using these treatments, either alone or in combination. When a cure is unlikely, chemotherapy, radiotherapy or other treatments can relieve symptoms, help you feel as comfortable as possible and may make you live longer. This is called palliative treatment.

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Updated March 2007