Cancer has often been called the emperor of all maladies. The time has probably come to proclaim that it is no longer the case in most. Now we are talking curative treatment as against palliative of the past. In a lot of ways cancer therapy is more strenuous both on the patient and the care takers. Perhaps in no other field of medicine a more collaborative effort is required. Advances in medicine and extensive research has brought us to this juncture where we are better equipped in dealing with what are even considered advanced cancers.

Therapy in cancers is often either surgery, chemotherapy, radiotherapy, immunotherapy. Some may require only one of the listed. Others may require more than one modality of treatment. Chemotherapy involves use of drugs to fight cancer cells. These drugs are to be administered with precision to get desired results. Side effects are addressed according to the occurrence by a team of oncologists with inputs from other specialities if need be. Radiotherapy involves radiation to shrink the tumour. Some tumours maybe highly sensitive to this modality of treatment as against few others which don't. Most of these cycles are given on a day care basis over a span of two to three weeks. Surgery is often curative in most solid tumours. In case of advanced stage cancer a preceding chemotherapy/ radiotherapy maybe offered to shrink the tumour size.

In a small proportion of cases who do not respond to any of the above, newer modalities of therapy which are targeting cancer causing genes are offering hope. This is gonna be ground breaking in the years to come. Early diagnosis and prompt treatment has yielded excellent overall survival rates.