About the Side Effects of Chemotherapy for Stomach Cancer

Video Transcript

"Hello I'm Dr. David Cathcart. I'm a family practice physician from Heartland Regional Medical Center in St. Joseph and we are going to talk about chemotherapy drugs and their side effects today. Chemotherapy for stomach cancer can be given in the form of injections or perhaps through an IV or even pills. Sometimes chemotherapy for stomach cancer particularly is given before surgery to remove the tumor or even after surgery. Many times with stomach cancer the best option is to try and reduce symptoms rather than try and completely kill the cancer. The drugs are given too in such a way as to try and shrink the tumor down to make passage of food through the stomach a little easier. Unfortunately like all other chemotherapy drugs they have side effects. The side effects again can be hair loss, weight loss, they can cause nausea and since that is one of the things we are trying to avoid with stomach cancer we have to deal with it and it is often dealt with by reducing the dose or in giving other medications that might help reduce the nausea that comes along with chemotherapy. But in any event the side effects are the same. You can get sores inside your mouth. If you are a woman you may get sores inside your vagina because again these cells are the ones that are rapidly dividing and again as you may have recalled from an earlier segment cancer chemotherapy drugs kill cancer cells because they are rapidly dividing. Any cell that is rapidly dividing like for example in the mouth, the hair, or the cells inside the vagina are also rapidly dividing so you are liable to get sores in those areas or hair loss. This is Dr. Cathcart talking to you about chemotherapy for cancer."