How to take oral chemotherapy drugs for colorectal cancer

How to take oral chemotherapy drugs for colorectal cancer? The most commonly used oral chemotherapy drug for colorectal cancer is capecitabine tablets. The regular medication time is: take it half an hour after breakfast and dinner every day. The doctor will calculate the dosage based on each person's body surface area. The way of taking medicine is different for different treatment purposes. The following are three ways to take capecitabine tablets.

The first method is preoperative radiotherapy combined with oral chemotherapy drugs: taking capecitabine tablets before surgery can improve the effect of radiotherapy. From the first day of radiotherapy, start taking oral chemotherapy drugs. Take it for a total of 5 weeks, 5 days a week, which is a 5×5 plan. Patients can imagine that they are still office workers, who need to go to work from Monday to Friday and rest on weekends. The same is true for oral chemotherapy drugs, take them for 5 consecutive days and rest for 2 days. This is easier to remember. The radiotherapy time of each hospital is different in the morning, noon and evening, but oral medications should still be taken once in the morning and evening.

The second method is to combine it with intravenous chemotherapy. That is, a 3-week chemotherapy plan: 1 day of intravenous chemotherapy, 2 weeks of oral chemotherapy drugs, and 1 week of rest. The 2-week oral chemotherapy drugs are taken continuously without rest in between.

The third method is to take chemotherapy drugs orally alone. It is suitable for older patients who cannot tolerate chemotherapy. You can try taking it in small doses at the beginning, and then increase it to the regular dose. Although this method takes a long time to take the medicine, it is easier for patients to tolerate it. The specific method is to take oral medicine for 2 weeks, stop for 1 week, and then continue to take it, and repeat this cycle for half a year (before and after surgery).

Doctors generally recommend that patients take medicine on time every day. If a patient misses a dose of medicine, it is recommended not to make up for it. Just take the next meal. For example: a patient takes medicine at 8 o'clock every morning, and suddenly one day he forgets to take it at 8 o'clock and remembers it at 10 o'clock. In this way, he can continue to take the morning meal. Taking it 1 to 2 hours late will not have much effect on the effect of the medicine. If you remember that you forgot to take the medicine the day before the next day, don't take double the medicine. Just take it according to the normal dosage. Here, patients should also be advised that they must take the medicine on time and according to the dosage to achieve a good therapeutic effect, and try to avoid missing doses.