Elements of chemotherapy and radiotherapy in animals

Abstract

Cancer treatment is usually a polymorphic one, which includes: surgery, radiotherapy, chemotherapy or any combination of these. In order to choose a correct and appropriate therapeutic procedure for each patient, the following should be noted: the result of the histological examination, the malignancy status, the patient's medical history and the financial possibilities of the owner. In this regard, a minimum database on the health/illness of the patient is required, which is obtained by a blood test (biochemistry and hematology) and a urine test. For proper staging and correct prognosis, X-rays (simple or/and contrast), ultrasound or CT scan (CT) will be performed. Once the diagnosis is made, it is important to define the goals and expectations of the treatment applied. Tumor growth presents an exponential development phase, and then quickly enters a plateau phase. Response to chemotherapy depends on where it is on the development curve (if there are few cells in the division then the fraction destroyed by chemotherapeutics will be small). In conclusion, small tumors with high growth fraction are more sensitive to chemotherapeutics because they have a larger number of cells in the proliferative phase. In this bibliographic reference are presented the main elements of chemotherapy and radiotherapy in animals.