12 Facts About Adjuvant therapy

Adjuvant therapy, known as adjunct therapy, adjuvant care, or augmentation therapy, is a therapy that is given in addition to the primary or initial therapy to maximize its effectiveness.

The surgeries and complex treatment regimens used in cancer therapy have led the term to be used mainly to describe adjuvant cancer treatments.

An example of such adjuvant therapy is the additional treatment usually given after surgery where all detectable disease has been removed, but where there remains a statistical risk of relapse due to the presence of undetected disease.

Adjuvant therapy's results, published in 1985, indicated increased disease-free survival for the former group.

Since then, the field of adjuvant therapy has greatly expanded to include a wide range of adjuvant therapies to include chemotherapy, immunotherapy, hormone therapy, and radiation.

Example, radiotherapy or systemic therapy is commonly given as adjuvant treatment after surgery for breast cancer.

Hyperthermia therapy or heat therapy is a kind of adjuvant therapy that is given along with radiation or chemotherapy to boost the effects of these conventional treatments.

Concomitant or concurrent systemic cancer Adjuvant therapy refers to administering medical treatments at the same time as other therapies, such as radiation.

Adjuvant therapy is particularly effective in certain types of cancer, including colorectal carcinoma, lung cancer, and medulloblastoma.

Standard chemoAdjuvant therapy regimens are usually administered every 3 weeks to allow normal cells time to recover.

Since most early-stage endometrial cancer cases are diagnosed early and are typically very curable with surgery, adjuvant therapy is only given after surveillance and histological factors determine that a patient is at high risk for recurrence.

Adjuvant pelvic radiation therapy has received scrutiny for its use in women under 60, as studies have indicated decreased survival and increased risk of second malignancies following treatment.