Cancer treatment is administered with the goal of putting a patient in remission and stopping the spread of cancer. The treatment protocol will depend on the type of cancer, patient preference, patient health, and the stage of the cancer. Depending on a doctor’s diagnosis, patients may be subjected to a combination of the following treatment options, or just one.

Let’s take a look at the most common treatment options used to treat various types of cancer:

1. Surgery
A significant percentage of cancer patients go through surgical procedures as part of their treatment. Surgery entails the surgical removal of cancer-causing tumors from the body, and often also removes a margin of surrounding healthy tissues as well to prevent spreading. Most oncologists recommend surgical treatments when the cancer isn’t advanced; when it hasn’t spread to other parts of the body.

2. Chemotherapy
It involves administering medication that kills cancerous cells directly into a patient’s body. The medication works by keeping cancer from spreading to other body parts while killing the cancerous cells. Chemotherapy is preferred when cancer has already advanced and is already spreading (metastasizing) in the body. Chemo drugs come in various forms including oral pills, creams for rubbing on the skin, injections, or intravenous infusion. Chemo is given in a duration (day, week, month) followed by a period where cancerous cells can die off and the patient can recover from side effects (i.e., hair loss, nausea, weight loss, vomiting, dry mouth, etc.).

3. Targeted therapy for cancer
This treatment aims to destroy certain gene abnormalities that create a conducive state for cancer cells to grow and thrive. Targeted therapy for cancer stops changes in cancer tumors that triggers them to divide, develop, and spread. Doctors use either small molecule drugs or monoclonal antibodies to halt the cancer.

4. Radiation
This technology uses radiation to target and destroy cancer tumors in the body. It is preferred when the cancer is concentrated to one area. There are two types of radiation—external beam radiation, which involves using an external machine to direct high energy particles to the affected area; and internal radiation treatment, or brachytherapy, which places radiation empowered capsules, liquids, seeds, or ribbons into the body to attack the cancer cells (i.e., often used for cervical, liver, or prostate cancers).

5. Immunotherapy
This treatment uses the body’s immune system to battle cancer. Your doctor may also refer to it as biological therapy. Mostly, the therapy will boost your immune system so that your body can fight cancer better. Another way it may work is through marking cancer cells so that the immune system finds it easy to capture and kills the cancerous cells. The drugs are induced intravenously, topically or orally.

6. Hormone therapy
Hormone therapy is used on specific types of cancers that depend on certain hormones for growth. It is sometimes called endocrine therapy. Cancer trials suggest that the treatment may work in two ways; either by stopping your body from making hormones or change the hormones from working the way they should. Sometimes it may involve removing organs that produce the hormones such as testicles or ovaries. Mostly, hormone therapy is coupled with surgery after cancer has been deprived growth and shrunk into a containable size.