In Chemotherapy, anti-cancer drugs are administered to patients for killing cancerous cells. These drugs not only kill cancerous cells it also prevents them from growing and spreading.

Chemotherapy has its side effects too. Anti-cancer drugs can also cause partial damage to healthy cells. However, in most of the cases healthy cells return to normalcy after the treatment is over.

Most of the times two or more drugs are administered at a time as the result is better when drugs are given in combination than giving one drug at a time.Chemotherapy can be used for different goals:

To cure cancer: This is the primary aim of any type of treatment. Chemotherapy has the ability to kill all cancerous cells.

To control the cancer: Here chemotherapy is either followed or preceded by surgery or radiation therapy. In this case, chemotherapy is used to slow the growth of cancerous cells and prevent it from multiplying.
To relieve symptoms: Here too, chemotherapy is preceded or followed by other methods of treatment. Here drugs are given to provide relief to patients from symptoms of cancer like pain.
In most of the cases, chemotherapy, surgery, Radiation Therapy and biological therapy are done in combination.

Types of Chemotherapy:
There are different types of chemotherapy:

• Neo-adjuvant therapy: Here chemotherapy precedes surgery or radiation therapy. The main aim of doing chemotherapy in such cases is to reduce the size of tumor so that it becomes easier to destroy cancerous cells during surgery or radiation therapy.
• Adjuvant chemotherapy:Here chemotherapy is performed after surgery or radiation therapy. In these cases, chemotherapy will destroy the cancerous cells that are left even the surgery or radiation therapy.