Medical Treatments

Many cancer treatments are available at St. Clair Health. Your treatment options will depend on various factors, such as your current health state, the type and stage of your cancer, and most importantly, your opinion. As a team, you and your physician will work together to discuss potential risks and benefits for each treatment to determine what’s best for you. 

Medical Oncology uses chemotherapy and targeted drug therapy to focus on specific mutations and kill cancer cells. An emerging and exciting form of medical oncology is immunotherapy, which uses the body’s immune system to attack cancer cells.

Types of Adult Cancer We Treat with Medical Oncology

• Blood Cancers
• Breast Cancers
• Colorectal and GI Cancers
• Endocrine and Thyroid Cancers
• Esophageal Cancers
• Head and Neck Cancers
• Leukemia and Lymphoma
• Lung Cancers
• Melanoma and Other Skin Cancers
• Ovarian, Endometrial, and Gynecological Cancers
• Prostate, Bladder, and Kidney Cancers
• Soft Tissue Cancers and Sarcomas

Treatment Techniques

• Chemotherapy is a drug treatment that uses powerful chemicals to kill fast-growing cells in your body. Chemotherapy is most often used to treat cancer, since cancer cells grow and multiply much more quickly than most cells in the body.

  Doctors sometimes use chemotherapy when surgery is unlikely to remove cancer on its own.

  Chemo is an appropriate route for:

  • Treating cancer
  • Keeping cancer from spreading
  • Slowing the growth of a tumor

• Immunotherapy, also called biotherapy, uses biologic agents to boost the immune system to fight cancer cells.
  
  
• Hormone therapy uses drugs to block improper activity of certain hormones.
  
  
• Targeted therapy uses drugs to interact with cancer cells by targeting the molecules involved in cancer growth or spread.