Patients with advanced colorectal cancer should not over-receive chemotherapy

When colorectal cancer develops to the late stage, surgery is the undisputed main treatment method. However, when some patients are diagnosed, the cancer cells have already spread and metastasized, so surgery is often ineffective and chemotherapy is the only option. So, what should patients with advanced colorectal cancer pay attention to during chemotherapy?

Chemotherapy can be said to be the most important treatment for patients with advanced colorectal cancer. Since it is in the advanced stage, it is obviously not easy to completely cure the tumor, so most patients have to live with the tumor. Some people believe that as long as this "bomb" remains in the body, it is necessary to continuously attack and suppress it. As long as colorectal cancer continues, chemotherapy will not stop. However, some people also say that overtreatment is worse than too little.

In general, after 4 to 6 courses of chemotherapy, if the tumor is under control, which is what doctors call benefit, patients with advanced colorectal cancer will stop chemotherapy and not continue until there are signs of tumor recurrence, then further treatment will be taken, such as second-line chemotherapy or other palliative treatments.

Patients with advanced colorectal cancer should not overdo chemotherapy. If chemotherapy is continued after a certain course of treatment, it will not only fail to remove the tumor more thoroughly, but may also induce drug resistance in the tumor and cause immune suppression. More obviously, it may cause the toxic effects of chemotherapy drugs to continue to accumulate and intensify, which is not conducive to the patient's survival.